


There Be Dragons Here

by garfunkelandgoats



Series: TBDH!Verse [1]
Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: 'how they got together' story, Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Self Harm, M/M, Mutual Pining, bad people doing bad things, mentions of drug abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 22:54:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 37,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8552647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garfunkelandgoats/pseuds/garfunkelandgoats
Summary: "Because some roads you shouldn't go down. Because maps used to say, 'There be dragons here.' Now they don't. But that don't mean the dragons aren't there. "There is something broken inside both of them. Something that never quite healed right, and instead festered, grew back crooked. In a way, they almost deserve each other. But the facts are these: in the end the world is bigger and badder than a couple of killers for hire, and it doesn't give a damn what they deserve.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> If this looks familiar it's because I already wrote and posted the first five chapters a while back, realized I hated how I wrote it but wanted to finish, and resolved to start from scratch because I honestly couldn't stand looking at the damn thing anymore.
> 
> UPDATE: It's been forever since I even thought about this but I've recently regained interest in Fargo and Wrenchers. I can't promise that I won't end up losing motivation again, as it seems to be my way, but I will do my best to see it through. Thanks.

Rural Texas, 1980

 

_Everywhere he looks, Wyatt sees nothing but snow. Bright, white, unblemished Christmas-card snow; the kind that glows against the light of the mid-day sun but is spared of the intensity of its heat. It looks like the movies, with the happy family huddled around the hearth for warmth, laughing and telling stories. The movies he watches in the dead of night, with the volume turned off, when his own family is asleep. It is like nothing Wyatt has ever known, growing up in Texas, and yet he feels nothing at the sight of it; no sense of childlike wonder, nor any semblance of excitement or even surprise._

_He is barefoot, dressed only in his nightclothes, but he feels nothing. Above him, sky stretches on for miles, grey and cloudless. The sun is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere in the distance, grey meets white, forming a seamless line at the horizon. Snow begins to fall, slow and aimless, dusting his auburn curls with white._

_He blinks and finds himself in the middle of a dense forest._

_The dark trunks of trees stretch up for miles and miles to block out the sky, and yet the sunlight reaches him still, no different than when the skyline remained unbroken._

_When he looks down he sees a trail of blood leading deeper into the forest. Sluggishly, as if he were moving underwater, Wyatt follows it. His feet move of their own accord, taking care not to tread upon the bright red blood. He does not know how long he follows the trail. Around him the bark on the trees continues to peel, their insides rotten to the core. The light begins to die, slowly, but he can see the path ahead of him perfectly. Countless bodies hang from the trees, men in crisp suits with grey faces and too-wide eyes, their tongues lolling from slack jaws, their entrails dark and oozing. They gasp at him like suffocating fish, mouths forming words that he cannot hear. Wyatt presses on, unfettered._

_The trail of blood changes; where once it was merely scattered drops in the snow, it becomes darker, thicker, as if painted in wide strokes across the white canvas. Wyatt steps in it and his foot sinks as the snow and blood begin to melt together beneath him. He feels hands grasp at his ankles, trying feebly to drag him down into the black depths beneath him. An eyeball floats by his right elbow. Warm blood soaks through his nightclothes, sticky against his skin, and the spell over him breaks._

_Wyatt cries out in alarm, drowning in his own fear and nausea as he continues to sink. The stench of shit and decay floods his nose as he desperately grasps at the snow, trying to pull himself out. Submerged up to his shoulders he looks to the sky, gasping for air._

_He stops sinking. Before him, watching from the edge of the snow, is a great wolf. Its brown fur is soaked in blood, bits of guts and brains caught in its coat. Its eyes are black. The beast’s lips curl back into a grin, its teeth dull and flat like those of a human. Every inch of Wyatt’s being screams for him to get away but he is unable to move, exhaustion weighing heavy on his limbs. Its grin stretches back further, impossibly wide, past rows and rows of straight, white teeth. The wolf’s neck and torso seem to grow longer, crossing the space between them, and it licks the side of Wyatt’s face. He whimpers, shuddering at the cold wetness of its sticky saliva on his cheek. The beast laughs, releasing a gust of hot, reeking breath that makes his eyes water as he gags, scrunching up his nose in disgust. It grins at him once more, jaw crusted with dried blood, as it slinks back from whence it came, the darkness reclaiming it._

_The hands reach out from the depths once more, gripping his clothes in their tight, skinless fists, dragging him down. He tries to fight, clawing at the surface, but his child arms are powerless against the many hands pulling him deeper into the darkness, enveloping him in their grotesque embrace._

_Above him, the last ray of sunlight dies, and his lungs fill with blood._

xxx 

Wyatt bolts up in bed, drenched in sweat. His chest heaves as he struggles to catch his breath, grasping the front of his nightshirt in his little fist. He feels tears on his cheeks and hastily wipes them off with his sleeve. His ears redden with shame as he kicks off the sheets, drawing his knees up to his chest. The only light in the room comes from the cracks between the blinds on his window, bathing the floor and foot of the bed in blue moonlight. The paint on the walls is in need of a fresh new coat, peeling and cracking, a particularly putrid shade of yellow with traces of hideous floral wallpaper behind the thinner areas. In the bed next to him his twin sleeps soundly, drooling on his pillow. The hall light turns on and his oldest foster sibling storms past Wyatt’s doorway, face red with fury, dragging a suitcase with only one wheel behind him. 

Moments later their great brute of a father lumbers after him, a vein bulging on his forehead as spittle flies from his mouth. He gestures aggressively, shouting things Wyatt cannot hear, before disappearing from sight. A long moment passes with no further action, before the large man crosses the hall again, fuming, before disappearing once more. 

The light in the hallway turns off. 

Wyatt spares a glance at his brother, who has turned over in his sleep but otherwise shows no signs of stirring. Slowly, cautiously, he climbs out of bed and tip-toes to the doorway, peering out. The door at the end of the hall is slammed shut, a light shining through the space above the floor. Shadows move in that space and Wyatt swallows his anxiety, creeping across the hallway.

He pushes the door open to see Jerry furiously stuffing clothes into the suitcase. Wyatt hesitates in the doorway, strongly considering retreating to his room, but he must make a sound because the older teenager whirls around, face flushed and eyes bloodshot. Jerry visibly deflates at the sight of him, expression softening as his rage dies. He runs a hand through his dark hair, jaw clenched, and Wyatt sees the scabbing track marks on his lower arms, stark against his pale skin. Jerry notices his gaze and his face grows even redder. He tugs down the sleeves of his sweater and forces a small, strained smile before sitting on the bed and patting the spot next to him. Wyatt shakes his head and the older teenager grows exasperated, thick eyebrows knitting together over his dark eyes. 

He raises his hands and signs slowly, deliberately, as if to keep them from shaking: _W-Y-A-T-T, go back to bed._ The boy shakes his head, screwing up his face into what he hopes is a determined look. Jerry laughs bitterly, scratching absentmindedly at his arm through his sleeve.

"Stubborn little shit," he says aloud, terribly fond. Wyatt catches part of it and frowns. 

_You shouldn't say S-H-I-T. It’s a bad word._ Jerry’s lips twitch upwards. 

_Yeah, well, I’m a bad guy._ His smile disappears and he tugs his sleeves down further, gripping the insides in his fists. Jerry rises to his feet, turning to finish packing his suitcase. Wyatt climbs onto the bed to help him fold his shirts and for the next few minutes neither says anything, focusing instead on the task at hand.

Jerry closes the suitcase, running a shaking hand through his hair once more. _Take care of yourself, okay, kid?_ He ruffles Wyatt’s hair, forcing a smile once more, before grabbing his suitcase and turning to leave. The younger boy grabs his sleeve and he turns, frowning.

_Don’t go._

“Shit, kid—sorry” Jerry sighs, crouching down to Wyatt’s level.

_Take me with you._

The older teenager shakes his head. _I’m a loser._ He makes his finger and thumb into an L and Wyatt giggles. _My friends are losers. Trust me, W-Y-A-T-T, you don’t want anything to do with us._

_Please._

_You’re making this a lot harder than it has to be._ Jerry frowns. Outside he can hear his friend honking the horn of his truck. _Tell you what. Stay in school, eat your greens, and maybe I’ll come back and get you when you’re older. Alright?_

_How much older?_

_Eighteen._

_Ten._

_Seventeen._

_Ten._

_Sixteen. Take it or leave it._

Wyatt nods and Jerry’s lips curl back into a crooked grin. _You’re a good one, kid. Stay away from guys like me._ He doesn’t wait for a reply, getting up and walking away without so much as a look back.

In nine years Wyatt will lie awake in a hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling and watching the hours pass by in the shadows on the walls. He will ignore the throbbing pain in his bandaged, aching wrists, dulled by painkillers, and his brother’s sleeping form in the chair by his bedside. He will ignore the quiet beeping of monitors and the burning shame and regret deep in his belly.

All he will know in that moment is that he has never hated anyone in his life like he hates Jerry. 

Halfway across the country, Jerry will stand in a strange, quiet house and stare vacantly at the smoking gun in his hand. He will ignore the blood-stained walls and the pained whimpers of his dying friends. He will ignore the discarded bags full of worthless valuables on the floor and the bodies of the middle-aged couple whose bedroom he’s standing in. He will ignore the distant wailing of sirens and the blood on his hands as he rips off his ski mask, running a hand through his unwashed hair, dying for a fix.

He will ignore the voice in his head screaming at him to turn around, go home, _don’t fucking do this_ as he raises his gun to the crying boy in Spiderman pajamas who watches him with wide eyes from the doorway. He will ignore the boy's mop of curls and the teddy bear clutched in his tiny arms and the tears in the kid's eyes. He will ignore the passing resemblance to the only person he'd ever given a damn about.

When he pulls the trigger, he will feel nothing at all.


	2. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot believe it's been so long since I last updated this. I can't promise that I'll finish it, because I don't know how long it'll be before I have to leave for god knows how long and I probably won't have time to write much after that, but I will try. (Also, FYI, parts of chapter one have been edited. Nothing earth-shattering, but if you don't care to read it again, the only specific detail of either characters' backstory that's been changed beyond wording is that it's Numbers' foster father, Wrench' biological father.)
> 
> Warning for lots and lots of references to substance abuse and some references to underage sex

Along a road in North Dakota, 1993

The world outside his window is grey, vanishing into the distance faster and faster with each passing moment. Jerry leans against the glass, scratching awkwardly at the side of his face, before giving up entirely and letting his shackled hands fall, useless, onto his lap. The bus smells about the same as his cell had, its prisoner stench almost comforting in its familiarity. He pulls the sleeves of his jacket over his hands, curling into himself in an attempt to stay warm. The air conditioning was cranked up all the way and he could tell the ride into the city was going to be a long one. 

“Sit up straight, McNall,” orders one of the guards, prodding his arm. He grumbls irritably but does as he's told. He was about to be cut loose, and anyways it wasn’t worth the black eye. Even after a year in the slammer and the three years he’d spent on the run before that, the pseudonym still felt unnatural. Since when did he look like the kind of guy to have a surname like _McNall?_ Still, it had done its job, and he’d managed to avoid being connected to a crime far worse than fraud. 

Jerry ran a thumb over the slip of paper in his hand. After all he’d already done to fuck up his life, he didn’t have too many other options than to dig himself in deeper. Besides, the pay looked good. He wasn’t sure if he could live with it, but he knew that he’d have to. When he closeshis eyes a little boy in spiderman pajamas toppled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. Fuck. Then there was _that_. His fingers curl into a fist around the paper, knuckles white, and he clutches it like the lifeline it is. God, he misses blow. He breaths in, steadying himself, and ignores the urge to scratch that particular itch. 

Although he hadn’t seen much of the sky over the last year save for trips to the yard, he was sure it hadn’t always been so grey. Not in Texas, anyways, and that place had been as much of a shithole as anywhere else he’d lived over the years. No, Texas had been obnoxiously blue and bright and garish with just as much fake hospitality as Minnesota, minus the cold. Prison had been cold. Not just on the surface, either. It was the sort of cold that settles in your bones and makes a home for itself. The sort that stares back at you in the mirror from the day you get out until your last day. 

For the first time in a long time, he thinks about his father. Speaking of cold. Enough time had passed that the details of the man’s face were going fuzzy in his mind’s eye. Did he still have all his hair? What color was his eyes, exactly? Whatever color they had been, they had been dead long before the man himself. Like a shark. He had been a sharp man, all straight lines and hard glances and a geometric smile that never quite reached his eyes. 

“Remember who you are,” he used to say, whenever Jerry complained about the kids at school. Only, it didn’t matter who he was when the picture of his parents’ crashed car was plastered across the front page of every newspaper and everyone knew that it was his own fault for all the illegal shit he’d got himself caught up in. It didn’t matter when he was sent off to live in his grandparents’ shitty house in shitty Texas and then a miraculously shittier house full of leftover TV dinners and loud assholes throwing remotes at his head and dirty kids from shitter places than that. After that the only time anyone gave a damn about who he was was when he bit his weed dealer’s ear half off over fifty lousy bucks at the end of his first week of sophomore year. Or when he contorted his hands into awkward shapes and the only person worth a damn in the whole shitty state grinned at him with wide, adoring, puppy-dog eyes like he’d given him a gift. Or when sucking off a man twice his age in a graffitied bathroom stall turned to snorting lines and throwing rocks at windows and saying yes to a needle full of sweet nothingness to prove that he was worth his time. 

Jerry knew who he was just fine. Had known a long time, no matter how he’d tried to hide it, tried to tell himself he could be somebody good, somebody who would teach himself to sign out of a stolen library book just to make a lonely little kid smile. But the truth was that he had dead eyes too, same as his father, and he knew the only thing waiting for him was a fancy car at the bottom of the river, with only the fish to know or give a damn about what breed of scumbag Jerry Menuek had been.

This, he reminded himself, was only the next logical step for him. He was finally going to use that accounting degree, and it didn’t matter who signed his paychecks so long as he got them. He’d get high just the same, stew in his apartment and stare at the ceiling just like he would have with a straight job. This is fine, he told himself, this makes sense.

But even still, a part of him wanted to just tear the slip of paper up and pretend he’d never seen it. Just walk out of his life and move somewhere else and change his name again or not but go back to selling used cars or rotting in some asshole’s seedy apartment with a needle in his arm. He could let himself give in to the gaping hole in his chest that longed to shatter everything he was to pieces. Only he couldn’t. Not really. 

He wasn’t young and scrawny and painfully naive in his righteous anger at the hand he’d been dealt anymore. Far from it. Jerry had passed his third decade and become resigned to the endless shitty nothing that was his life. Hell, in another year he’d be as old as the man who’d set him down this path had been when he first batted his eyes at him after a show. He could destroy his life if he wanted, sure, but he couldn’t blame it on being young and stupid this time. He’d have to acknowledge the hole, tell it yes, let it become him. 

As much as he hungered for that beautiful, delicious nothing, he’d have to make due with the noisy, confusing everything that came with cocaine. At least he could function with that annihilation. It didn’t feel quite so hopeless as the alternative.

A sign speeds past on the side of the road: _Bismarck, 4 miles_. Shit. This is it, he thinks, time to decide. The little slip of paper feels like a weight in his hand. He runs his thumb along its crumpled length once, then again, and tucks it safely into the palm of his hand. Jerry looks around at the other men shackled to their seats. 

He and two others are going free when they reach the gates of the state penitentiary. The rest are being sent to another cage, another hole. He doesn’t envy them their fate but he does envy the certainty. Beyond catching another bus to Fargo, a normal one with families and students and the like, his future is about as concrete as the air. There’s something thrilling in that, he must admit, but also something terrifying in the same primal way he felt the first time he was forced to uproot his life. And the second. And the third. Running away is nothing new, he knows it better than he knows himself, but the horror of it has never really faded. 

When the bus rolls to a stop, when they’re led out one by one and the cuffs come off for the first time in what feels like forever, when he’s told to get lost and set out back into the world with only some money for bus fare, Jerry doesn’t stop shaking. He doesn’t feel grounded, stable, like he isn’t about to be swallowed up into the great expanse of sky and smog, until he finds a payphone, punches in the number on the little slip of paper his cellmate had pressed into his sweating palm a lifetime ago, and says “This is Numbers. I’ll take the job.”


	3. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone cares to know, at this point in the story Wrench/Hammer are both 20, Numbers is 31, and Letters is 35.

Fargo, 1993  
Later that day

Wrench contemplates the mug of coffee in his hands, feeling its heat rise to meet his face. It’s late in the evening, in that stretch of time between the afternoon and sundown proper where all the lights shine a little bit brighter and the horizon turns a beautiful shade of purple-orange, bleeding through the grey clouds like blood from a bullet wound. It’s almost magical in a way, about as magical as anything ever is. There’s a warm feeling deep in his belly that isn’t entirely tipsiness--he suspects the unusual fullness of his wallet is to blame. He hasn’t gone to bed hungry in over a year, not since he started working for the syndicate, but the pain of his stomach trying to eat itself isn’t something easily forgotten. 

He’s happy. Happier than he’s been in a while. Not real happiness, he isn’t even sure he’d know _real_ happiness if he felt it, but it’s as happy as someone like him really can be, given the circumstances. Given where he was. 

There’s a part of him that feels guilty for that, or knows that he should. He isn’t a good person. Maybe he could have been, if things were different, but who he could have been doesn’t matter. He’s a bad person. He does bad things. He doesn’t feel nearly as bad as he should for doing them. Years ago, when he still believed in God as more than a vague notion or a hope to be called on when his back’s to the wall, Wrench might have asked for forgiveness. But he knows better now. Men like him only face judgement at the hands of worse men. And that’s alright with him. He’s big enough and bad enough that only a real monster of a man could judge him, and at that point he’d probably deserve it. 

He smiles down at his drink and watches his warped reflection smile back at him. He looks years older than he is. Living on the streets will do that to a person. But there’s something in the softness of his face, in his eyes, that betrays his youth when he isn’t careful enough to keep it in check. 

A fist pounds the table to get his attention, rattling his mug in the process, and he looks up to see his face reflected on his brother’s bulkier frame as the man in question sits down across from him. Ethan--no, _Hammer_ , he has to remind himself--always preferred to keep his hair longer before they came to work for Fargo. Now they had to look as close to identical as possible; it’s more intimidating, or something.

Hammer never liked being a twin much, not really, something about being half of a whole always made his skin itch, and he certainly hadn’t been happy about that development. He’d had some ratty little mullet through high school, no matter how much Wrench teased him for it. Thought he looked like a badass, like some sort of movie star. Wrench thought he looked like a fucking idiot, and told him as much, but he’d always call him a beanpole or a fag and either that’d be the end of it or one of them would end up with a black eye. 

_Letters says sit tight, she’ll meet us here._

Wrench groans audibly, rolling his eyes. So much for his good mood, he thinks with more than a little resentment.

_Did you really have to bring her along?_

Hammer glares at him, the tips of his ears reddening. _What the hell do you care?_

_I don’t,_ Wrench begins. He knows a fight when he sees one and isn’t nearly drunk enough to deal with sulky, pissed off Hammer. _Just forget about it._

He shakes his head. _No, tell me, asshole. I’ve had enough of your shit._

Wrench flips him the bird, letting out a weary sigh. 

_Jerkoff._

_Bite me._

Hammer’s face is turning an ugly shade of purple and he looks rather like he’d like to strangle him. Wrench’s lips twitch upwards for a moment at the sight.

_You don’t see me acting all passive aggressive or whatever,_ He gestures broadly as if only just remembering the word, _when you get laid._

Wrench laughs, raspy with disbelief, and furrows his brows as he grins incredulously at his brother. _Are you being serious right now?_

_What?_

_You threatened to bury alive the last guy I brought home._

Hammer’s expression is stony. _That was different._

Something inside of Wrench snaps and he pounds the table with his fist, breathing out through his nose in an attempt to calm himself. _How in the hell was that different? She’s almost twice your goddamn age._

_Yeah, fuck you, pal._

_You too._ They both slouch in their seats, crossing their arms over their chests like stubborn children and refusing to meet eachother’s eyes. 

Neither twin sees Letters approach. She simply appears, as if from thin air, a loud presence despite her short stature. She’s objectively attractive, not exactly pretty in the traditional sense, but when shrouded by the dense aura of her own confidence she is stunning. Wrench can’t look right at her. It is as if she were the sun, every bit of her shining bright from her bleach-scorched mop of hair to the garish red of her lipstick. She’s like a vampire, mouth still dripping with some poor fool’s blood, hypnotizing or blinding all those in her path. Everything about her screams danger to Wrench, and from the way his brother lights up at the sight of her he worries that she might suck him dry next.

Hammer is absolutely fucking hopeless. Wrench rolls his eyes, miming retching onto the floor. He smirks, pleased with himself, when his brother glares at him, face bright red. And then Letters places a dainty finger under Hammer’s chin and he turns to mush again. He doesn’t know what they’re saying and doesn’t care to. Something gross, probably. It almost always is. Instead, he flags down a waitress and gestures alternatively between his cup and ear, hoping that she understands that he’s deaf and not just an asshole. Hammer speaks up on his behalf and he feels an annoyed, embarrassed flush spreading from the back of his neck. He nods his thanks when she refills his mug, then stares pointedly out the window.

When she slips onto Hammer’s lap, his knee bumps the table, nearly spilling Wrench’s drink. He frowns and grabs his mug, cradling it in his hands as he sips at it, trying not to look. His eyes are burning but he isn’t about to show it in front of Hammer of all people. Or, god forbid, Letters. No, instead he grits his teeth and watches the lights on the sign outside flicker. It’s getting dark out, slowly but surely, and he knows that means he’ll have to drive his brother around to get laid. _Again_. His good mood thoroughly dead, Wrench is left with his thoughts and with a burning envy towards his brother. He doesn’t want Letters, never has, but Hammer is all he has in this world. All he’s ever had, really, his entire life. And with his brother sabotaging his every effort at finding someone, and the nature of his work, a part of him fears that Hammer is all he will _ever_ have.

Hammer smacks the table with his hand again to get Wrench’s attention.  
 _What?_

_Don’t be like that._

_I’m not being like anything._ Wrench insisted, pointedly not looking at Letters as he reddened with shame. Hammer rolled his eyes, smug as ever to be in the right for once.

_You’re moping. It’s fucking irritating._ Letters taps him on the shoulder, standing up and raising an eyebrow as she glances between the two. Hammer follows suit and gets to his feet. _Come on, we’re leaving._

Wrench makes a point of finishing his coffee as slowly as humanly possible. Hammer throws his hands up in frustration and flips him the bird before stalking out of the diner, Letters on his heels. Once they’re gone he sets down the half-empty mug once more, leaves the appropriate amount of money on the table with a generous tip, and steps out into the cool night air.


	4. Chapter Three

Fargo, 1993

Numbers’ feet never ached so bad in his life. He’d been walking for hours along the side of the road, huddled in on himself for what little warmth he could derive from his thin jacket. Above him, stretching on endlessly, grey turned to orange turned to purple turned to black. He knew he should have stopped for the night in the last town he passed, that would have been the smart thing to do, but after taking the bus he didn’t have enough for a goddamn candy bar much less a room for the night.

It figures, he thought with a bitter laugh, that he would fucking freeze to death or keel over on the side of the road on his way between prison and a job with the goddamn mafia. Running a hand through his unwashed hair, he blinked rapidly and laughed again, hoping that doing so would keep him from crying. Numbers--because that is his name now, isn’t it--threw his head back, groaning loudly. 

“Fuuuuuuck me.” Karma. It had to be. He hadn’t believed in a higher power in a long time, hadn’t gone to temple in even longer, but this had to be some kind of divine punishment for something. Being a shitty son, doing drugs, hell, being a fucking murderer had to qualify--he was clearly the optimal candidate for smiting. Fantastic. 

He pulls a box of Marlboros from the pocket of his jacket, sticking his last cigarette between his teeth as he roots around for a lighter.

“Oh, god--damn it…” Numbers lets out a sigh of defeat. He can see his breath, watches the result of his exhale drifting away, and curses whichever asshole put him on the wrong goddamn bus. Probably some fat, balding fuck in a suit going home to read magazines with his wife who hasn’t touched him in years. If Numbers ever finds him he intends to strangle him with his own ugly tie. If he ever makes it to Fargo in the first place, of course, and isn’t a human popsicle on the side of the road by morning.

Yeah, that’ll be rich. Those clowns down at the syndicate will surely get a kick out of the greenhorn accountant freezing to death before he even gets into the city. Larry will definitely be yukking it up when he hears what happened to his cellmate. Fucking idiot. Numbers tucks the cigarette behind his ear and plods on, screaming internally. 

And then he’s squinting against the bright, blinding beams of oncoming headlights. Numbers blinks once, twice, then sticks out his thumb. Could be a serial killer or something for all he knows but anything’s better than freezing. The car passes him and he groans, resigned to his fate. 

“God damn it.” 

Just then, the car slows a few yards past him, and backs up. The back window rolls down and an asian woman with platinum blonde hair and a cheshire grin sticks her head out. She checks him out unabashedly, icy gaze sweeping him from top to bottom as her lecherous, red-lipped grin widens. Her teeth are almost blindingly white in contrast, and all in all she reminds him of a cat licking its chops at an especially tasty-looking mouse.

“I’m not selling,” he says without thinking. He isn’t that desperate, right? Of course not. Probably.

She throws her head back and laughs, the sound shrill but not unpleasant, and something flashes in her eyes that looks like approval. 

“We’re not buying, sweetie. Get in.” And so he does. He isn’t anything close to sure as to _why_ he does it. She’s dangerous, clearly, and a part of him wants to bolt but a much more dominant part doesn’t care.

In the passenger’s seat, a copper-haired cowboy glares at him, face screwed up into the expression of one smelling something particularly foul. He’s not an unattractive man by any means, handsome even, but he has such a dumbassed, scowling look on his face that Numbers can’t think of him as anything but ugly.

And then he looks at the driver and does a double take. They’re twins, clearly. Both younger than him but by how much he isn’t sure. They have the look about them of hard men just recently molded from childhood, but with a certain softness to their features that suggests that a good bit of that toughness may be an act. Something constructed to hide their age. Christ, they’re practically kids. But then again, when he was their age he was getting passed around by punks and dealers and robbing gas stations for coke money, so what the hell does he know?

Kids or not, the one in the passenger seat looks like he wants to bash his face into pulp. Probably could, too. Numbers shifts uncomfortably in his seat and the asian woman pats the back of the driver’s seat with a smirk. Said driver stares back at him in the rear-view mirror without saying anything for a long, awkward moment before driving away. 

“So,” she begins, examining her fingernails. “What brings you out here? Business or pleasure?”

He snorts. “Do people normally come to Fargo for pleasure?”

 

The man in the passenger seat grunts in reluctant agreement, then resumes his glowering. Numbers doesn’t know what to make of it. 

“I’m sorry, is there a problem?” He kicks himself mentally. Great thinking, champ. Excellent way to end up in a shallow fucking grave in Bumfuck, North Dakota. Dad would be so proud.

“Cut the thug act, Hammer. It makes you look like a fucking moron.” 

“Yeah, whatever,” he grumbles, wilting, and turns around in his seat. The tips of his ears burn bright red with embarrassment. Numbers can see the driver rolling his eyes.

“What kind of name is Hammer?” What kind of name is _Numbers?_ It’s a stupid question and he knows it but as exhausted as he is he can’t seem to keep from shoving his foot in his mouth. 

“The ‘fuck you’ kind.”

“Wow, real wordsmith, aren’t you, guy?” Fuck it, if he’s gonna get murdered by a couple of hot cowboys and a terrifying blonde, so be it. Sounds about right for the life he’s led, anyways.

“Boys, boys,” The blonde woman leers, barely holding back laughter. “You’re both pretty.”

Numbers grins, feeling tired and stupid and warmer than he was ten minutes ago. “Am I prettier?”

She pats his thigh and laughs loudly, filling the space of the car with it. Like a force of nature, that one. He thinks he likes her. But mostly he thinks that if tonight ends with him in a ditch, that’d be okay.

“So tell me,” She waves her hand.

“Call me Numbers.”

“ _Numbers_. How do you feel about coke?”

“As opposed to Pepsi?”

“Cute. Do you party?” She’s sizing him up again, he can see the hunger in her gaze. 

“Used to.”

“And now?” He could say no. He could tell the cowboy up front to pull over, drop him off at a motel, something. But it’s been a year, and goddamn it, sobriety isn’t all it's cracked up to be, and something about this car, this night, this lonely stretch of road just seems inevitable.

And so instead he says “Sure,” and she nods to Hammer, who gestures to the driver. They meet each other's gaze in the rear view mirror again and he thinks that he’s never seen someone so young look so exhausted outside of the slammer. 

“So you’re twins, then?”

“What gave it away? The matching outfits? Or maybe the fact that we have the same _fucking face_?”

“I wasn’t talking to you, dipshit.” He rolls his eyes, nodding at the driver, who seems at least somewhat more intelligent by virtue of his silence if nothing else.

The blonde shakes her head. “Don’t bother.”

“Why not?” He frowns, furrowing his brows. “He seems like a real chatty, pleasant guy. Can’t be worse than his brother, anyway.” No reaction from the driver.

“Just don’t.” The smile is affixed on her face and he worries that he’s tread into dangerous waters. 

“Okay, okay. Fine, I’ll leave him alone.” In all of this, the driver has said nothing, his gaze fixed on the road ahead. It’s as if he hasn’t heard any of it, as if none of them were even there.

She pats his thigh again, hand traveling, and his breath hitches in his throat. “Good boy.”


	5. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is really bad I'm sorry

Fargo, 1993

Wrench swears he’s read the same line ten times now ten times now ten times now ten times now _Fuck_. 

Every time his eyes reach the period at the end they skip right back to the start, all the small printed black letters bleeding and blending together into some jumbled, garbled mess of lines and curves. And so he blinks to clear his vision and they all scurry back to their places but then he reaches the end of the line again and there’s no keeping them apart. 

God, why is Hammer such a fucking _idiot_? Clearly, he’s being punished for something. There’s no other explanation, and goddamnit the night was going so well before he called Letters, so obviously God must hate Wrench. He can see his parents now, how glad they’d be to see themselves vindicated.

He squints against the shitty, dim lighting of the vacancy sign overhead. He’d been meaning to get the interior lights fixed for weeks now but it hadn’t been worth the cost. Until now, anyways. Now he had to sit out here in the stupid car while his stupid jackass brother had a threesome with Letters and some random junkie they picked off the side of the road. Sure the guy could be a serial killer or something, but who cares about that when there’s screwing to be had, right? He gives up on reading, sets the book aside, and rests his head against the seat with a heavy sigh. 

If Hammer was so determined to keep him lonely, he could at least have the decency to be lonely with him.

Wrench closes his eyes, breathing in and out slowly, and scratches at the inside of his wrist through his jacket sleeve. Hunger isn’t the only memory still fresh in his mind, as much as he’d like to forget the rest of it.

He’d like to be a weapon, he thinks. An extension of Fargo’s long arm. Something borne from nothing, existing only to deal out destruction to those who deserve it no less than he himself does, something that eats sleeps and breathes mindless slaughter. He plays the part well; he’d always hated the way people didn’t really see him as a person due to his silence, the way they treated him like a piece of furniture, like he was too dumb to understand. It helped in his line of work, though. As much as it stings to be underestimated in everything but brute force, people fear a machine far more than a man.

And he’ll just have to find a way to be okay with that, or else. The faint outline of two raised, white scars on his wrists are still visible after four years of healing. Sometimes they still itch just as bad as they did with the bandages. _Or else._

Wrench opens his eyes and stares at the sign advertising the nightly rate. Some of the letters are buzzing, flickering, some are already out. There’s moss growing along the edges, and he wonders for a moment if everything in this goddamn state is falling to pieces. 

He glances away and jumps in his seat when he sees the junkie from earlier tapping on the passenger side window, looking surly. He unlocks the door after a moment of hesitation and the shorter man practically hurls himself into the passenger seat, slamming it shut behind him, and immediately begins ranting about something.

Wrench stares at him, wide-eyed and generally unsure of how to respond. The buttons on his shirt are undone, revealing dark chest hair and the edges of a few tattoos. His hair is messed up, pupils dilated, mouth going a mile a minute, and Wrench finds that he can’t stop staring. In part out of bewilderment, but also a sense of awe. The guy’s clearly high out of his fucking mind, manic even, but his face is so expressive that even though he’s talking too fast for Wrench to even attempt to read his lips he just can't bring himself to look away. 

There’s something familiar about it, some nagging feeling in the back of his mind that he knows him, that he always has, which is wholly unexpected and kind of disturbing.

And then, just as quickly as he started, he stops. There’s a long moment where they just stare at one another, and then Wrench points to his ear and shakes his head with a pained grimace. The other man blinks, eyes wide--and his eyelashes are weirdly long but it’s _nice_ \--and then his eyebrows shoot up in realization.

_You sign though, right?_

What. The. Hell. Wrench isn’t sure what he expected, but some random coke fiend hitchhiker with bizarrely pretty eyes just happening to know ASL definitely isn’t it.

He nods furiously, unable to keep a small grin from tugging at his lips.

_How long have you known ASL?_

_Since high school. I had a deaf friend._ That warm feeling is back again and he can’t fight the thrill of excitement he feels. Okay, he thinks, this is getting pathetic, but then the other man’s hands are moving again and he has to tear himself from his thoughts in order to follow.

_What?_

_I said, do you have a light?_ He pulls a cigarette from behind his ear. Wrench nods and grabs a lighter from the glove box. He goes to hand it to the other man but he’s already stuck the cigarette between his teeth, raising an eyebrow expectantly, so he lights it for him, willing his hand to remain steady.

He watches him take a long drag, unconsciously biting his lip. The other man rolls down his window and exhales the smoke before flicking some of the ashes onto the pavement.

 _Is your brother always this much of a dick?_ He makes the literal sign for ‘penis’ and Wrench snorts.

_Pretty much, yeah. What did he do?_

_He kept getting really jealous and weird. Kept making rules too._

Wrench barks out a laugh, eyebrows furrowed in disbelief. _Rules?_

 _We couldn’t even glance in each other’s direction for more than two seconds._ He laughs, eyes crinkling at the edges, and Wrench feels the back of his neck start to flush. 

_And then while things were happening,_ He coughs awkwardly at this, _He stares at me for like a whole minute straight._

_What the fuck?_

_And so I call him out on it, right, and he just kicks me out!_ They’re both laughing so hard they can’t breathe and Wrench knows he has prime material to torment Hammer with for weeks. The other man stops laughing first and watches him for a moment, expression unreadable.

 _Hey, what’s your name, man?_ For a moment he isn’t sure whether or not to make something up, but he figures if he says something he’ll never see him again anyways so it doesn’t really matter.

_Just call me Wrench._

_I’m N-U-M-B-E-R-S,_ he replies, and Wrench shows him the sign. _Numbers. Thanks. What’s with the names, anyways?_

_You aren’t exactly one to talk._

_Yeah, well, wasn’t my choice._

Wrench nods slowly, frowning. _Same line of work then, huh? F-A-R-G-O?_

 _Something like that._ They sit in silence for a moment. Wrench sighs through his nose, looking away, when Numbers pokes him in the leg to get his attention.

_You mind driving me somewhere?_

_Sure, where?_

_Gas station. Need more smokes._

And so they drive off, Numbers still nursing his last cigarette, Wrench looking at anything but him. He feels ill. But in a good way. Every time he looks at the guy he swears he knows him from somewhere, but with such a distance from the memory that he feels like he should, he really should, hell he _wants_ to know him, but he doesn’t.

As they pull into the parking lot, Numbers opens the door and gets out before Wrench has put the car fully in park. He turns, leaning on the open window, and puts up a finger, mouthing ‘one sec’, before heading inside.

Wrench sits back, running a hand over his face. Well, shit. This is happening now. His night had been all over the place so far and he genuinely wasn’t sure how it was going to end. Or why he was hanging out with Numbers, for that matter. Either way, he was certainly in a much better mood than before. Fucking Hammer. 

Just then, he sees Numbers bolt out of the gas station like a bat out of hell, carrying a bunch of presumably stolen groceries in his arms. Wrench starts the car and he dives into the seat just as the clerk exists the store. Numbers slams his hand on the dashboard, frantic, and they peel out of the parking lot and speed away.

Wrench glances at Numbers every couple seconds as he examines his loot. Lots of beer, Scrunyuns, and cigarettes mostly from the look of it. 

_What the hell do you think you’re doing?_ He drives with his knees, much to Numbers’ abject horror. 

_Focus on the fucking road!_ They drive a few more miles, in the middle of nowhere, before Wrench pulls over and repeats the question.

_I spent the last of my money on bus fare._

_Then why were you walking?_

_Bad intel. Gave me the wrong bus. Had to get off early._ Wrench rolls his eyes.

Numbers shakes his head defensively, brandishing his stolen prizes once more. _Let’s get drunk. It’ll be fun._

Wrench reluctantly agrees but he can’t help but smile a little bit. This is certainly better than sitting out in the car reading. Finally he looks around at their surroundings and grins wickedly, lightly punching Numbers’ arm to get his attention before pointing at a sign up ahead.

Numbers grins back at him. _A cemetery? Seems a bit M-O-R-B-I-D._

They get out, hopping the fence and making their way through the headstones that stick out of the ground like jagged teeth. The whole place is like the mouth of some great monster ready to swallow them up, but Wrench finds that he wouldn’t really mind at this point.

And so as the world around them gets darker and darker with each passing hour they get progressively drunker and the warm feeling in Wrench’s chest grows and grows. Numbers is fucking nuts, he has to be, but he likes him. A lot more than he’s liked anyone in a while. Drunk Numbers, especially, is weird and giggly and frequently forgets to sign but when he talks his face is still wide open and Wrench thinks that he could watch him yammer on about just about anything. 

He falls asleep first, curled up against some poor bastard’s headstone, and Numbers gets quiet, watching him for a long second, before breaking out in laughter. He ruffles the larger man’s curls, seeing through him, lost in his own world, and in his mind he’s years younger and Wrench is a sad little kid with nobody else watching out for him in the big, shitty world.

And so he forgets himself.

“Night, Wyatt,” he says, imagining his own thin mattress instead of the cold hard ground, and promptly passes out.


	6. Chapter Five

Texas, 1977

It’s a hot day, deep enough in August that Jerry could swear he’d already died and gone to hell by the way he’s frying even in the dubious shade of the bleachers, but aren’t they all? He’s more than a little stoned, but he hasn’t yet discovered the true depth of his gaping, empty need, only flirted with the concept of substance abuse, and so all he has to show for it is the beginnings of a migraine. 

It will be another year before the rage inside him screams so loudly he’d gladly shatter his skull into bits to shut it up. Only four months before some washed up punk rocker with his father’s eyes scoops him up and makes him feel special in all the worst ways. 

In twenty-nine years the red tide of violence and _shit_ he’s been swimming in all his life will devour him entirely and he will bleed out, alone, smack dab in the middle of the storm of the century.

But for now, Jerry Menuek is a fifteen year old pothead, newly settled into the displacement and abandonment that will define his adolescent years. He sprawls on the dead grass, staring up at a graffitied phallus and loopy cursive writing proclaiming: _Looking for a good time? Call Sherri_ with a number underneath. 

He considers it for a moment, but he knows what he’s looking for and a good time isn’t it. 

Despite the oppressive heat, Jerry pulls the sleeves of his worn out hoodie down, stretching them out to cover his hands, and digs his fingers into them, curling in on himself. 

Heat isn’t the same as warmth, and he’s desperately missing the latter. 

A few feet away, his not-quite-girlfriend is letting their dealer slip his hand down the front of her shorts, but Jerry’s too fried to give a shit. Instead, he blinks sluggishly, contemplating the lines of the spray-painted dick, the curves of the S in Sherri, the chewed up gum stuck to the bottom of the top seat. 

“Do you think,” he begins, struggling to make something coherent of his scrambled thoughts, and instead gives up, leaves it hanging. Nobody says anything. They aren’t his friends, not really; he doesn’t quite have the temperament for friendship, but he digs his claws into those aimless few who wander close, sapping them of what weed and companionship they’ve got before resenting their familiarity.

And then he hears it. Sounds of a fight, some kids on the other end of the field beating up on some poor bastard who couldn’t run fast enough. Or, he thinks as he gets a better look at the copper curls and wide, confused eyes of their victim as they kick him in the ribs, couldn’t hear them coming. Shit.

Although his limbs scream in protest, Jerry pulls himself to his feet, a righteous anger brewing deep within, and he stalks towards the commotion, puffing himself up to look bigger, deadlier, someone to be afraid of. 

“Hey, shitstains!” He shouts, grimacing at the pubescent crack in his voice on the second syllable. They can’t be older than nine or ten but the little bullying pukes must have heard of him because the color drains from their faces anyways. And so he grins wickedly, baring his teeth more than anything, trying to look like the version of himself who nearly Van Gogh’d some idiot dealer three weeks ago.

“It’s the psycho--” one rat-faced little turd hisses, smacking the tallest of the group on the arm with the urgency of childlike terror. “Come on, he’s gonna eat us!” 

“Get the fuck out of here!” He yells, making a show of reaching in his pocket as if for a switchblade, and they bolt. Jerry runs a hand through his hair, winded from running over. 

“Fucking kids,” he scowls, then remembers why he’s just traumatized a group of children half his age.

Wyatt is sitting in the dirt, staring up at him with bruises and skinned knees and tears in his eyes like he’s some sort of avenging angel, and he feels a swell of pride in his chest. Nobody else in the world has ever looked at him like that, like he’s anything but a scrawny little smartass with a vicious temper whose own loving grandparents weren’t patient enough to handle. He finds that he likes it, and immediately squashes the warmth of that sentiment.

He knows he shouldn’t care about the kid but nobody else seems to, and he knows that to disappoint Wyatt, to be one of the ones who kicked him when he was down, would destroy whatever tenuous normalcy he still clings to. There’s something broken in him, always has been, but when that kid smiles at him like he is now, so obviously starved for any semblance of kindness in his short life, he thinks that he could be Superman. 

And so he offers a hand to pull him to his feet and dusts the four year old off, still grumbling under his breath about little assholes beating up on a toddler. When Wyatt grins from ear to ear, gap-toothed and chubby-cheeked and cuter than he has any right to be, and signs _Thank you_ like he’s blowing him a kiss, Jerry swears he has heart palpitations.

 _Any time, kid,_ he replies, and means it. _You O-K?_ He isn’t sure of the sign yet so he spells it instead, awkward and cramping as anything, but it seems to make Wyatt happy so he doesn’t complain. 

The kid can barely sign himself, only started learning six months ago since his piece of shit parents couldn’t be bothered to find out _why_ he was so unresponsive and just assumed he was slow. But he wasn’t, obviously, the cheeky little shit was smart as hell, was picking up on reading and writing and signing way easier since Jerry pulled one of his daycare teachers aside. 

And he was good. Better than anyone the older teenager had met since his dad went and got himself killed and ripped him from the life he’d known. Wyatt was unbelievably, painfully kind, the type of kid who cried when ants got squashed, and Jerry knew that the world would tear him to shreds if he didn’t have somebody looking out for him.

They start walking home and Jerry pretends he doesn’t notice when Wyatt slips his hand in his, but eventually relents and gives him a reassuring squeeze. When they pass by the bleachers, though, he quickly steps away, burning with shame at the brief display of affection. 

He doesn’t care about anything or anyone, doesn’t feel anything but anger, and that’s all those idiots need to know. But even still, the look of hurt and resignation that flickers on Wyatt’s face before he can hide it stings bitterly and he is reminded of a younger version of himself trailing after his indifferent father like a lost puppy.

Remember who you are, he thinks, gritting his teeth at the memory. 

Remember _what_ you are.

And so he does not take his hand again even when the danger is passed, digging his fingernails into his own palms, and walks on as Wyatt follows a step behind.

He knows then that he will be one of the ones to disappoint Wyatt. He knows that he always was.

And in three years’ time he will make a promise he knows he can’t keep to a kid who trusts him far too easily and then he will wade into the red tide and let it drown them both without so much as looking back.


	7. Chapter Six

Fargo, 1994

Numbers contemplates the phone on his desk, wondering just how hard it would really be to hang himself with his new tie. It’s the week before Christmas, which is cause enough for suicidal ideation what with North Dakota somehow finding a way to get even colder, the people getting goddamn cheerier, and the unbelivably shity traffic getting impossibly shittier. But now some dumb yokel’s got it in his head that he could get one over on the syndicate and run off with Mr. Tripoli’s money, and while somebody else is having fun switching his eyes with his testicles Numbers is left with a mountain of paperwork to complete. 

The good news is that he has someone assigned to help him get through it.

The bad news is that that person is _Jergen_.

“So there I am, right; covered in soy sauce, wearin’ nothing but my birthday suit, and this bloody dog starts eyeballin’ me--” The Australian is perched on the edge of his desk, swinging his legs back and forth like a fucking child as he gestures wildly with a mug full of something that is most definitely not coffee. Numbers nods along absently, humming agreement in the appropriate places, but his eyes don’t leave the phone, staring at it as if in doing so he could will it to ring or burst into flames or something. The more he stares, the more Aussie’s blathering turns to a low drone in the background, until his eyes start to cross a bit with the effort of looking.

“You listening, mate?”

“Oh, sure,” Numbers murmurs without conviction before picking up the receiver. He hesitates for a moment before dialing Letters’ number. It rings once, twice, and again with no answer, and he gives up. For the past few weeks, ever since she got back from a job in Minneapolis, she’d been ignoring him entirely. It wasn’t so much her absence that bothered him as the lack of explanation. In his experience, Letters wasn’t exactly the subtle type; she didn’t do the cold shoulder. If she had a problem with somebody they’d usually end up with either a split lip or a slit throat and he wasn’t exactly keen on ending up with either.

“Anyways, then the damn thing’s got his teeth in my arm and I’m goin’ for my knife--see, I like to keep a knife on me no matter what--”

“That’s nice, Aussie,” Numbers says, frowning as he tries to remember Hammer’s number.

“I wish you’d call me by my name, it’s like I’m a piece of meat or something.”

“Uh huh,” He mutters absently, then dials. Hammer picks up on the second ring.

“This is?” Numbers rolls his eyes, then glances at Aussie and begins speaking in a terrible, cringe-worthy attempt at a falsetto.

“Oh, _Hammer_ , it’s the tooth fairy! I’ve come to collect after all these years, you dirty redneck bastard!” Jergen coughs into his hand to stifle a laugh, shoulders shaking with the effort, and Numbers shoots him a sly grin.

“Fuck you,” Hammer says, and hangs up. Numbers calls a second time.

“What the hell do you want?”

“Where’s Letters?” There’s silence on the other end and it’s all Numbers needs to know that something is very wrong.

“Who wants to know?” Hammer speaks slowly, clearly trying to conjure up his earlier bravado, but Numbers isn’t having it.

“Me, asshole.” Another long silence.

“She’s fine.”

“Did you do something?”

“Fuck you, no,” says Hammer, and Numbers believes him.

“Whatever. Tell her to call me.” He hangs up before the younger man has a chance to reply.

-x-

The call comes in the middle of the night, when Numbers is counting the cracks in the paint on his ceiling. His eyes are burning from exhaustion, and his stomach is utterly empty and he knows that he’s crashing but doesn’t especially care because if he _really_ squints, some of the cracks almost look like the Virgin Mary. Or Florida. Whatever. 

Either way, it’s fucking fascinating, and more importantly the more he looks at it the less he has to think about how thin his sheets are or how he would give anything for a fix right now or how he’s traded one prison for another.

And then it cuts through his thoughts like a knife, setting his ears ringing with the sound of it, and he scrambles to his feet to answer before the ringing stops.

“Yes?”

“I need to talk to you.” Her voice is low and serious, more than it’s ever been in the year he’s known her, and something that feels an awful lot like worry twists inside of him.

“Are you okay?” He asks, schooling his voice into bored interest. She doesn’t answer for a long moment but he can hear her breathing, slow and deliberate as if she were trying to keep herself under control.

“I need to talk to you,” Letters repeats, and this time her voice falters. Shit.

“Where?”

“The usual place. First thing.” She hangs up abruptly and Numbers finds himself sitting there on the edge of his bed in nothing but an ill-fitting pair of boxers, eyes affixed on a stain on the carpet as he holds the receiver in his hands. He wonders when this became his life, all this bullshit and secrecy and late night calls, and for a brief, desperate moment he wishes that he’d choked on his vomit all those years ago in the back of his boyfriend’s car. It occurs to him then that that wouldn’t have been so bad, in the grand scheme of things. 

And so it also occurs to him that the trajectory of his life was always going to end up this way, from the moment his father’s car sank into the Hudson river.

No, not even that. He’d had a darkness within him long before that, the sort that doesn’t allow for an easy nine-to-five and a pretty wife and kids and a dog. In his mind’s eye he is nine years old and staring at a fallen bird’s nest with a manic little grin on his face in the moments before he smashes it with a rock.

And so he puts the phone back and buries his face in his hands, groaning loudly, until the next door neighbor punches the wall, shouting for him to keep it down, _people are trying to sleep!_

“Yeah, fuck you, Darlene,” he grumbles under his breath, getting to his feet and grabbing a pack of Marlboros from his nightstand before heading out to the fire escape. If he’s going to be miserable he might as well smoke.

Leaning against the wall of his building, he’s shivering uncontrollably but can’t find it in himself to give a shit as he holds the cigarette between his teeth and roots around for a lighter before realizing he’s forgotten it. Just as he’s about to go back inside, he sees a familiar car parked across the street.

From this angle he can barely see more than the outline of Wrench’s stupid fucking fringe jacket, but he knows the other man is watching him. 

Numbers raises a hand in greeting, and Wrench drives away. They’ve been circling each other for weeks now but it’s nothing new and it certainly isn’t going to change anything, he thinks with a pang of irritation at the intrusion, and goes inside.

And so he collapses onto the bed, a stupidly persistent part of him wishing Wrench would come and join him, and falls asleep, drooling around his unlit cigarette.


	8. Chapter Seven

Fargo, 1994

He’s been sitting by the window for over an hour, nursing a cup of coffee, checking his watch periodically as the fog outside clears and the sky grows ever lighter, when she walks in. Numbers almost doesn’t recognize her at first, because for the first time he’s seeing her out of her usual blindingly starch-white pantsuits and instead wearing a hoodie that looks like it's seen its last day, her hair in disarray and makeup smudged. 

But still, even as her eyes dart around the diner as if looking for an out, she carries herself with the same confidence as ever--something has thrown her, shaken her up, but she has not wilted, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

When her steely eyes lock on him she makes her way over, lips forming a thin line.

“I ordered you a cup. Black with sugar, right?”

“Yeah.”

Letters opens and closes her mouth as if looking for a way to start.

“I’m sorry I haven’t,” she trails off, pulling at a loose string on her hoodie.

“It’s fine.”

“I meant to call you, but with everything--”

“Letters, what the hell is going on?” She rummages through her purse in lieu of an answer before passing him a pregnancy test, and when he sees the results the mouthful of coffee he’d yet to swallow dribbles from his slack jaw. 

“Oh,” he says, struck dumb.

She smiles bitterly, staring him down. “Oh.”

Numbers stares at the thing in his hands with wide eyes, his eyebrows shooting up practically to his hairline. And that’s all it is, really, a thing--a little plastic thing, something she probably bought at a damned gas station somewhere--but it may as well be a crystal ball showing him the long, dark, unimaginably bleak tunnel that is his life as it stretches before him in that moment.

 

He imagines the sort of neurotic hellbeasts that would come of their shared DNA. He imagines marrying her out of obligation, imagines their easy friendship, easy fucking, easy _fun_ turning to stony silence because they’re both too high-strung to ever be happy together, imagines drinking and losing his hair and shutting himself up in the study and one day driving off the road into the river with Fargo on his tail and running out of air and his lungs filling up with water and for a moment he can’t breathe and--

“Jesus Christ, is it _mine?_ ” He blurts out, unable to hide the horror in his expression. 

Letters rolls her eyes and smacks him on the arm, taking back the test.

“Of course not, jackass. It’s Hammer’s.”

“How do you know?” He can breathe again at last, some of the color returning to his face, and Letters smiles sympathetically but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“I just do. Intuition or something,” She waves off the notion dismissively, scrunching up her nose in disgust.

The waitress comes by with Letters’ cup of coffee, to which she nods awkwardly, using the act of blowing on it as an excuse not to meet Numbers’ eyes.

“So, um,” he begins, finding his mind blank. “What are you going to do?” She doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body, never has, and something about the thought of her going off and starting a family in some shithole small town with _Hammer_ of all people reminds him of some wild, dangerous thing caged for the world to gawk and pick their noses at.

Letters laughs without humor, looking smaller than he’s ever seen her, and her knuckles are white around the mug. The coffee is cooling down, likely lukewarm by now, but she hasn’t touched it.

“What _can_ I do?”

“You could get an abortion,” he suggests, unsettled by the way her expression tightens when he says it.

“I could,” she murmurs.

“You can’t be serious,” he shakes his head in disbelief.

“I think I love him.”

“You _think?_ ”

“I could love him,” she says, glaring as if this is an argument instead of a finality. “I could see myself loving him.”

“I think you might wanna be fucking sure before you go off and have a kid with the guy!” Numbers is incredulous, burning red, and for a brief, shameful moment he hates her; hates her for leaving, hates her for being so damned soft, hates her like he hated his mother once upon a time for choosing to bring an unwanted child into the unfathomably harsh, empty, shitty world and leaving him to deal with the consequences.

“Fuck you,” says Letters, and she gets up to leave.

“Wait, wait, don’t go.”

“It’s not your decision, Numbers.”

“I know,” he buries his face in his hands, feeling a migraine coming on. “I’m sorry, okay, just sit down. Please.”

She does, folding her hands on the table and challenging him with her eyes to say something stupid again.

He doesn’t disappoint.

“Wrench was outside my building last night,” Numbers says, sipping at his drink.

“Hm. Did you fuck?” She says it as casually as if she were talking about the weather.

“ _Really?_ ”

“Well, why not?” 

He sighs, kneading the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

“You know damn well why not.”

Letters shrugs, stirring her now cold coffee with a straw. “You obviously want to.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” he says, suddenly fascinated by a chip in the paint on the handle of his mug.

“No, actually, it really isn’t.” She rolls her eyes. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is I could see him loving me,” Numbers sighs. “I mean, Christ, he’s practically still a kid, and the way he looked at me last time--”

“Wait, wait, I’m sorry, are you saying there’s a _last time?_ ”

“Don’t interrupt. Yes, there’s a last time, and we were drunk and--”

“When _was_ this?”

“Few months ago. After that job he and Hammer did in Aberdeen.”

“The one with the..” she waves her hand, wracking her brain. “The guy with the glass eye?”

“That’s the one. Anyways, after you and Hammer left the bar we stayed behind and one thing led to another and he was looking all….cowboy-ish and handsome or whatever, and point is we fucked.”

“So?”

“So he tried to _kiss_ me.” She bursts out laughing, drawing annoyed looks from a few patrons, and he shrinks into his seat, red with embarrassment.

“Christ, woman, could you keep it down?”

Letters is practically wheezing and it’s a long moment before she can compose herself enough to respond.

“You let the man fuck you in the ass but you’re upset that he _kissed_ you?”

“Well, that’s different!” He realizes that he’s being louder than he means to be and sheepishly quiets down.

“Different how?”

“ _Different_ in that he’s a fucking--” he leans in closer, whispering. “ _hitman_. Fargo might not give a shit what I do in the bedroom on my own time, but if they found out we were screwing, or god forbid _dating_ , we’d both end up in a shallow grave!”

“Hammer and I have been alright.”

“Yeah, well, I think Fargo’s more worried about a bunch of queers ruining their reputation than you and your _baby daddy_.”

“Oh, shut up, he’s not my anything.”

“Whatever you say,” Numbers chuckles bitterly, glancing out the window at the sign outside.

Letters rolls her eyes at him. “Could say the same to you, y’know.”

“Hm, sure.”

“I know you like him.”

“I don’t. He’s good at what he does and he’s a decent lay, but I’m not getting all googly-eyed about him. And besides, it was just a one time thing, he got all weird about it so it’s never gonna happen again.”

She smiles, placating and utterly meaningless. “Whatever you say.”


	9. Chapter Eight

Fargo, 1994

Between bursts of static, a cat chases a mouse on the TV screen, and Hammer smacks the top of the set with the flat of his hand as if that fixes anything. The antennae are crooked, the thing itself is old and cheap as hell--they probably stole it off the back of a truck or something, Wrench can’t even remember, but the knobs are coming off and the color is shit and they should really get rid of it but something about its particular brand of awful almost feels like home.

Still, it has captions, and Hammer actually puts them on, which is more than Wrench could have hoped for back home. Back home he was more likely to get a kick in the teeth for asking. 

Wrench watches his brother as he messes with the antennae, only really succeeding in making the image even worse than it was already, but still plugging on with a dark flush creeping up the back of his neck as if giving up would be admitting defeat. 

He swallows his mouthful of cheerios and glances at the tacky, obnoxiously bright owl clock on the wall. It looks like something a clown threw up on, which goes lovely with the mucus-yellow walls of their apartment, but they got it for nothing when the sweet old lady who lived upstairs died, so he can’t find it in himself to really complain.

He smacks the coffee table as gently as possible to get Hammer’s attention.

_You need a haircut._

_No I don’t._

_E-T-H-A-N, you’re my brother and I love you, but you look fucking stupid._

Hammer flips him off, frown deepening.

_Letters says I look S-E-X-Y with it longer._

_She’s lying. You don’t._ He raises an eyebrow at his twin before making an attempt at a placating gesture. _I can cut it for you if you want._

_Well you’d better not think I look S-E-X-Y, that’s fucking gross._

Wrench rolls his eyes, letting out a long-suffering sigh. Just like Hammer to bulldoze over him entirely. _Don’t flatter yourself._

_I know you’re a Q-U-E-E-R and all but don’t start with that shit._ His lips are curled back into a shit-eating grin but Wrench isn’t in the mood to deal with his bullshit.

_Whatever. Cut your fucking hair, D-I-P-S-H-I-T._ He turns away, going back to his soggy cereal, and in the corner of his eye Hammer throws up his hands in exasperation. It almost feels like a victory.

He can’t hear it when somebody knocks on the door, but it’s done with enough force that he feels it a little bit and exchanges a wary look with his twin. Wrench grabs the glock taped to the bottom of the couch just as Hammer grabs his own weapon from atop the bookshelf. He makes his way to the door, pressed against the wall, as his brother hangs back.

Wrench looks out the peephole and sees Numbers swaying drunkenly in the doorway. He immediately lowers his gun and turns to sign to Hammer. 

_False alarm._

When he opens the door, Numbers has practically collapsed against the wall, leaning on it as he stares up at the taller man. Wrench grimaces and offers him his arm but Numbers shakes him off, mouth going a mile a minute, as he braces a hand against the solid expanse of Wrench’s chest. 

If he said it didn’t stir something in him he’d be lying.

Wrench looks to Hammer, utterly confused, to see his brother with a truly murderous look on his face. He feels an irrational, fleeting impulse to protect the smaller man, and squashes it immediately.

Numbers is the one to throw the first punch. He launches at Hammer, screaming about something Wrench doesn’t catch, and it’s all he can do to pry him off before Hammer can kill him in retaliation.

“You’re gonna get her fucking killed!”

“Fuck you, it’s none of your goddamn business!”

Wrench holds him back as he struggles, a manic look in his eyes, until finally Numbers starts to calm down and relax against the larger man. He very pointedly doesn’t look at him, feeling the tips of his ears starting to burn red, and lets go.

Numbers staggers out of the way, glancing between the twins like a cornered animal about to go for the jugular, and steadies himself against the wall.

_He’s fucking wasted. Go easy._ Wrench frowns when Hammer rolls his eyes at him.

_He’s a fucking asshole is what he is._

_I know. Please?_

_Whatever._

Wrench’s lips turn up in a small, grateful smile that Hammer pretends not to see as he stalks back to the television. He turns back to Numbers, trying to look as nonthreatening as possible since the accountant is still staring at him like he’s about to bolt.

_Come on, I’ll drive you home._

_He’s gonna get her killed, man._ Numbers looks more resigned than angry. Tired, even. He allows himself to be led towards the door when Wrench’s hand hovers awkwardly over the small of his back.

_Get in,_ Wrench signs, opening the car door. Numbers practically collapses inside and after a moment of hesitation he buckles his seatbelt for him, shaking his head disapprovingly. He knows that he’s being a mother hen, Hammer always gives him shit for it when he tries that sort of thing on him, but Numbers is too trashed to say anything about it so he can go fuck himself, he thinks as he climbs into the driver’s seat. 

Numbers taps him on the shoulder, looking absolutely miserable. _H-A-M-M-E-R told you, right?_

Wrench nods grimly.

_What the fuck do they think they’re doing?_

_I don’t know. Do you need me to roll down the window?_

_No. Too cold._ Numbers shakes his head. They sit in silence for a moment before he gets Wrench’s attention again.

_Why were you outside my place last night?_

_I wasn’t._ He turns the key in the ignition and begins to drive away, jumping at the opportunity to nip that line of questioning in the bud as he can already feel an embarrassed flush creeping up his neck. 

In the five minutes it takes to reach Numbers’ building he can feel the other man looking over at him from time to time when he thinks he doesn’t notice. He helps him out of the car and into the building with little opposition, even though Numbers is mostly dead weight, but it's once they get inside that he starts being difficult.

_Which apartment is yours?_

“Y’know, you’re kind of a dick, but you’ve got real nice hands,” slurs Numbers, grinning dumbly. Christ. Wrench can barely understand any of it from the way he’s mumbling, but it’s enough to know that this is going to be harder than he thought.

_Which apartment?_

“Letters is gonna be a shitty mom, like, shittier than mine probably, and I don’t think mine even remembered my goddamn name half the time but at least she didn’t kill people.” He pauses, eyes wide, and looks at Wrench as if he’s uncovered some awful truth. “Shit, you don’t think my mom killed anyone, do you?”

_Probably not._

_She could have, though._

_Maybe. Which apartment?_

_Fourth floor, second on the right_ In the elevator he props Numbers against the corner, keeping a healthy distance.

The shorter man keeps swaying in place, laughing to himself occasionally, saying something about how he could see himself and Wrench doing something, and Wrench is relieved when they reach the right floor.

Once they’re inside, Numbers sprawls out on the bed, mumbling something at Wrench with a wide, weirdly genuine-looking grin on his face. 

Wrench furrows his eyebrows, confused, and Numbers repeats himself.

“Sorry I never called.”

_It’s fine._

“I really wanna fuck you again,” he laughs burying his face in the pillow. “But that’s probably a bad idea.”

_Sleep it off._

“Do you think,” he begins, then remembers to sign. _Do you think Letters is gonna leave?_

_I don’t know. Maybe._

“It’s fuckin’ stupid,” Numbers says, and falls immediately unconscious.

Wrench looks down on him where he lies, still fully clothed, on his ratty mattress and thin sheets, and feels a weird, shameful, misplaced warmth in his chest. He finds a blanket crumpled on the floor and pulls it over him, then promptly takes his leave, lest he forget himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why do like all of these chapters end in Numbers passing out


	10. Chapter Nine

Bismarck Suburbs, 1995  
A month and a half later

Wrench slumps in the passenger seat, feeling his eyes grow heavy as the hours meld into one long, continuous nothing, lulling him as easily as the vibrations from the radio into a comfortable drowsiness. It’s a bad idea, obviously, he _knows_ that, but he’s hardly slept over the last few weeks with the sheer number of jobs Hammer has insisted on taking. It’s been one after another, every goddamn day, and he knows that his brother’s doing it to distract himself from the Letters situation but this kind of reckless bullshit is bound to get one of them killed.

Hammer punches him in the arm and he jolts awake, hand reaching for his gun before his brother shakes his head and points towards a minivan parked across the street.

_Is that him?_ Wrench has to squint in the poor light, glancing from the photo in the folder on his lap to the squirrely little man who climbs out of his car.

_I think so._

_You think so?_

_Fuck off, quit busting my balls._

_Well you can’t just grab the guy if you don’t know if it’s him._

_It’s him! Of course it’s him!_ Hammer rolls his eyes, gesturing between the picture of the man in question as he walks to his house. The lights are already off for the night, nobody’s home from the looks of it.

Wrench nods, satisfied, and they get out of the car in unison. He spares a glance towards his brother and feels his lips pull back into a wry grin in spite of himself. Hammer might be a pain in the ass but together they’re fucking unstoppable. 

It’s a familiar dance by now, choreographed over the last few years and a lifetime of shared everything; the way they fall into step together, their combined brutal efficiency as they cross the darkened street. 

They’re more than human, like this. They’re the goddamn boogeyman.

For someone who has known little power in his life before he learned how to be bigger and meaner than those standing in his way, the knowledge that he is a reckoning brought down on this sleepy little town is more than a little intoxicating, no matter the self loathing it brings with it. There’s still a part of him, though, that stands in front of the mirror every morning looking for some trace of the person he was; some part that wonders if maybe he could have been good, if some thing or another had been done differently in his life would he be something people loved instead of feared, an ordinary man with an ordinary life instead of the terrifying consequence little rat bastards like their mark spent their lives looking over their shoulder for.

But this, oh, _this_. This feeling, like they’re so huge they could level the whole damn town, like he’s John fucking Wayne rolling in to wreck some dumb asshole’s day, makes the whole thing-- the whole shitty life of too-cold bedrooms and not enough food and enough what-ifs and regrets to stew over until the world stops turning-- completely and utterly worth it.

It’s been a few years since this became their life. Before there was desperation and misery, and now there’s a sense of excitement, like it hasn’t quite yet set in that they will never, ever be able to leave the syndicate alive. He knows--logically he knows that once you’re an asset there’s no going back--but in Wrench’s mind they’re still playing pretend at being bad men, as if they were trying on their father’s clothes and smoking a toy pipe in the bathroom mirror. 

He hasn’t yet become resigned to the knowledge that if there really is a hell he’s already written himself a one way ticket--there’d been enough of that talk before for entirely different reasons and for now he doesn’t give two shits about hell, but some day he will. Oh, how he will.

Wrench and Hammer have this thing down to an art, sure, but it isn’t real yet. It won’t be for some time, and so they’re still careless and it’s fun because they’re almost twenty two and the world hasn’t been kind to either of them but they still think that no matter what happens, no matter how deep into the darkness and depravity they dive, they won’t ever drown in it. It’ll be alright in the end, it always is, and they’re young enough and dumb enough to know they’ll never die. They still think there’s an _after_.

And in a little over a decade, Wrench will sit on a dirty, barely slept-in motel bed in a strange city with a gun in his mouth and he will remember this feeling. And when that day comes he will wonder how he was ever so foolish as to think there was anything waiting for him at the end of the road but senseless, pointless, inevitable pain. 

But not today.

No, today the pain won’t be his, because his isn’t the road about to reach its end. That dubious honor belongs to the dumb shit who thought he could screw Fargo and live to tell the tale, and so today Wrench revels in the ultraviolence.

As he reaches the safety of his front door their mark happens to look over his shoulder and see the two twin giants approaching. His eyes bulge from his head like he’s been electrocuted and he bolts inside. Hammer runs forward before he can safely lock the door, sending it crashing open and throwing the smaller man to the ground.

“Aw, shit! Look, man, tell Fargo I’ll have their money, I’ll--”

Wrench steps over the threshold into the kitchen and grabs the man by the collar of his shirt, slamming him into the wall hard enough to nearly knock over an ugly painting of fruit.

“Shut up,” says Hammer, glowering. “Where’s the goddamn money?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t hurt me, I--” Wrench punches him in the stomach as hard as he can, knocking the wind out of him, and lets him fall to the floor in a heap.

_Anything?_

_No such luck. Asshole’s not talking._

Wrench hauls him to his feet and punches him again, breaking the man’s nose with a sickening crunch that makes Hammer grimace.

“Wait, wait, please--”

“Where’s the money?”

“I don’t--” Again, in the mouth this time, and blood dribbles from the man’s lips a he gingerly spits out a tooth and lets it scatter across the wooden floor.

“We can do this all night, guy. Where’s the fucking money?”

“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you, just--” Wrench gets ready to hit him again and Hammer puts up a hand.

“Where is it?”

“It’s upstairs. In a briefcase.”

“Where?”

He whimpers and so Wrench squeezes his broken nose as hard as he can between his fingers.

“Fuck! It’s--it’s--it’s in the guest bedroom, bottom of the closet!”

Hammer relays this to Wrench, who promptly drops the smaller man to the ground where he curls up in a ball, trying and failing to hold back tears. Fucking pathetic. While his brother hangs back to keep an eye on the mark, Wrench makes his way to the stairs. As he passes the living room doorway he sees that the Christmas tree is still up a month later. 

He has to step over discarded toys; brightly colored plastic robots and threadbare stuffed animals on his way up, and feels something inside himself lurch. It still bothers him to know that the men he’s killing have families. He won’t become numb to the carnage and sorrow he leaves in his wake for some time yet, if ever. Normally it isn’t hard to justify to himself what he does, but he can’t look at things like that without imagining kids like the ones that ended up in his parents’ foster home. Poor little bastards with nowhere to go who grew up to be junkies or hitmen or didn’t grow up at all.

The second floor is bigger than he expected. More open. A long hallway with a window at the end, three doors on either side. He opens the first door on his left and steps into what appears to be the kids’ room. It’s nice, with purple wallpaper and two unmade twin beds pushed against the wall, more toys strewn across the floor and piled in front of the closet.

Wrench frowns when he sees the beds, a sinking feeling in his stomach. Shit. There isn’t supposed to be anyone home, the guy’s been fighting with his wife and she took the kids to their grandparents with her a week ago, that’s what Fargo told Hammer anyways, but then why the hell aren’t the beds made? Out of the corner his eye he sees a flicker of movement through the slits in the closet door and his heart plummets. Oh, fuck.

He makes his way across the room, stepping over toys in his way, and pulls the door open to find two kids, a boy and a girl, couldn’t be older than ten. 

They scramble to the back of the closet, staring up at him with wide eyes, and Wrench feels like a fucking monster.

He just stands there for a moment, mind racing as he tries to come up with some way this won’t end badly, before making a decision. Putting a finger to his lips to shush them, he closes the closet and walks out, turning off the lights and closing the door behind him.

Fuck, this is bad, this is _really_ fucking bad. What the hell was Fargo thinking not telling them the fucking kids came back, fuck, they’ve seen his face now but he’s not about to shoot a goddamn child, he may be a monster but he’s not _that_ evil.

This is fucked. More fucked than he’s been in a long time. He’s up shit creek without a paddle, as they say, and as he paces back and forth he notices that the bathroom door across the hall is open.

It wasn’t before.

Wrench bolts down the stairs, taking them two at a time, time slowing to a crawl as if to mock his desperation, and he staggers to a halt at the kitchen door. Hammer is sitting at the table, keeping his gun pointed at their guy as he eats the man’s cereal.

And the wife is standing in the doorway to the den behind him, shaking, tearfully pointing a pistol at his brother’s _fucking head_.

“ETHAN!” He shouts, desperate to get his attention, and draws his weapon as Hammer looks up in shock and in the split second where he starts to turn around she shoots and then her brains are splattered across the wall and her husband is screaming, struggling where he’s tied up in the corner, and Hammer is clutching his head as it gushes blood.

Wrench is at his side in an instant, practically leaping over the damn table in his haste.

“Fuck!” Hammer shouts, eyes wide with shock and pain. He’s shaking uncontrollably but doesn’t seem to realize it.“That bitch fucking shot me!”

He waves Wrench off as his twin starts hovering, trying to get a good look.

_I’m fine, she just grazed me._

_Are you okay?_

_Stupid fucking bitch._

_Let me look at it._ Wrench grabs his brother’s wrist before he can protest, moving his hand from the side of his head where there’s a nasty looking but thankfully shallow gash. He breathes a sigh of relief, the horror of what almost happened crashing down on him, and notices that he too is shaking.

“Fuck,” breathes Hammer, eyes glazed over as he stares at a point on the wall.

_Are you okay?_

He turns to look at Wrench, breathing heavily. He’s never seen Hammer so afraid.

_I don’t think I can do this anymore._

Their mark is sobbing on the ground when Hammer turns and shoots him in the face. And then again. And again, and again, until he’s out of bullets.

_I still need to get the money,_ Wrench signs, putting a gentle hand on his brother’s shoulder.

_Okay. I’ll trash the downstairs. Make it look like a robbery or something._

Wrench nods, frowning. He doesn’t tell him about the kids.

When he comes back downstairs, the briefcase in hand, they count the money at the table as if a married couple isn’t lying dead around them, and promptly leave. Hammer says nothing on the ride back to their motel, and after he calls Fargo and grudgingly lets Wrench bandage his head he immediately goes to bed in his clothes without another word.

Wrench doesn’t sleep that night, only lays on his back and stares up at the ceiling and pretends he doesn’t see his brother’s shoulders shaking with stifled tears.


	11. Chapter Ten

Fargo, 1995  
Three days later

Numbers takes a long drag of his cigarette, exhaling as his lungs begin to burn. He flicks the ashes out the open window of the car, leaning back in his seat with a heavy sigh and his hand hangs limply out the window. 

“Fuck,” he says to no one.

It’s a crisp night, right at that point in the year where winter struggles and dies so that spring can take its place. The air smells like rain, wet grass and gasoline. He hasn’t slept in a week. Ever since Letters handed him that little stick of plastic with the course of their lives written on it in cheery colors, he hasn’t had much rest; the kid’s not his, sure, but she certainly is. Moreso than anyone else in his life, anyways. 

She’s the closest thing to an actual friend he’s had in a long time and this horrible uncertainty that has ruled both of them since the reveal of her pregnancy looms over him every night while he stares at the wall as if by doing so it would somehow burst into flames and take his whole damned apartment down with it.

“Fuck,” he says again to the empty car, because there’s nothing else _to_ say. Hasn’t been for a while now. Maybe ever, no matter how he’s always liked to pretend otherwise.

His phone rings, louder than a thunderclap in the silence of the mostly empty lot behind his building. It’s an ugly thing, more brick than phone really, but it gets the job done. Numbers answers on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?” Letters doesn’t have to introduce herself. She’s the only woman he talks to on a regular basis and he’s got a habit--no, a rule--of ditching his hookups before they can ask for his number, as if they even would. It’s an ego thing and he knows it, the sort of women who prowl the bars he frequents aren’t the sort to call after, but it’s nicer to think he’s using someone than being used.

“Nowhere. Everything okay?”

“I need to talk to you. Shit’s happened, and I just...I really need to talk to you.” 

He hasn’t recognized her since that day in the diner. It’s not so much that she’s changed as withdrawn from herself entirely, only really emerging at work or when they go off to the clubs together. But even then, her usual lechery seems forced, as if she’s trying to remember who Ms. Letters is as she pretends she doesn’t see him pretending not to notice how much she’s been drinking, hanging off the arm of some brainless hunk or another as she flashes that tight, red-lipped grin at strangers who think they know her from the shape of her dress. 

There’s something shark-like about the whiteness of her smile, dead in the eyes, and although others may mistake it for something else he knows it better than he knows himself.

Sometimes they fuck, sometimes they even go out and get pancakes after, and he knows she’s still seeing Hammer too but there’s something off about the whole thing, like some great seismic shift has sent their whole arrangement reeling.

And Wrench, _well_. 

Wrench certainly doesn’t help, what with the way he awkwardly hovers around Numbers on the few occasions they interact, neither standing nor sitting, like he’s some goddamn kid at a school dance. It’s a fucking drag, honestly, and more often than not he wishes he’d never slipped up in the first place. 

But hell if the idea of slipping up again isn’t tempting.

He’d been drunk that night, they both were, and under the purple and red neon lights of the sign above the bar Wrench looked downright gorgeous, way more unfairly handsome than any redneck greenhorn with a jacket like that had any right to, and Numbers was nothing if not a weak, weak man.

And, well, he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t enjoyed it.

A lot, actually.

Probably more than anyone else he’d fucked in a long time.

But, he reminds himself, it can never happen again. Wrench is too young to understand what a piece of shit Numbers is and he can’t find it in his heart to tell him. And fooling around with Letters is a lot different than doing it with Wrench, because nobody gives a shit if the syndicate’s assets fuck each other so long as what’s between their legs is different and he isn’t exactly looking to take a tire iron to the skull so no matter how much he may want to, it can never happen again.

It’s as simple as that. And no goddamn kicked-puppy looks from Wrench are going to change his mind, no matter how persistently he felt that annoying, painful twist of regret deep in his chest when he pushed the kid away.

It was a mistake and nothing else.

If he says it enough times he can almost believe it.

“Numbers? Are you there?”

“Yeah, sorry,”

“Meet me at the Flamingo.”

“Right now?”

She hangs up without another word and he groans loudly, letting his head fall back.

“Oh, sure, I’ll get right on that,” Numbers mutters to himself before putting out his cigarette and tossing the butt out the window as he turns the key.

The Flamingo is probably the least aptly named establishment in all of North Dakota if not the world, and he has no idea how a shitty little rundown motel that truckers go to to get laid in the middle of the goddamn Midwest ended up with that title, but nonetheless it stuck, shining bright on the side of the highway like some garish beacon with the large neon flamingo on its sign, some of the letters gone out so it looks like it’s called the ‘ming’. 

He pulls into the parking lot in one of the spaces that isn’t occupied by large trucks or the occasional van, women in ill-fitting, revealing clothes milling around the place and shivering as they look for someone willing to buy what they’re selling.

Numbers calls Letters back and she answers almost immediately.

“I’m here. What room?”

“We’re in 3B.”

“Who’s we?” He already knows the answer, kneading the bridge of his nose between the fingers of his free hand as he lets out a frustrated sigh.

“The twins are here too.”

“Okay.” He hangs up, putting the car in park, and sits back for a moment before getting out of the car. A woman with bright pink hair and dark roots approaches him and asks for a light, jutting out her chest as she does so. She’s a lot older than he is, the age showing even under layers of foundation in the harsh lighting of the parking lot.

He gives her what little is in his wallet, feeling like the worst kind of scumbag. “Just take it, I’m not looking to fuck.”

“Thanks, hon,” she says, looking him up and down, and he walks faster.

It takes him a bit to find the right door, trying hard to be as invisible as possible to the various lowlifes that the place seems to be crawling in.

He knows what _some_ of them are probably selling, and he’s been off the stuff long enough that sobriety is just starting to feel normal again and that’s a rabbit hole he’d rather not go down again if he can help it.

Numbers stands in front of 3B with a hand in the air, hesitating for a long moment before he finally knocks.

Hammer opens the door, his expression contorting as if Numbers were some sort of smelly pest. As pleasant as the sight is, Numbers is immediately distracted by the bandages wrapped around the taller man’s head.

“What happened to your…?” He gestures, indicating the bandages.

“Fuck you.”

“Lovely as ever,” Numbers rolls his eyes before pushing past him into the cramped, dingy motel room. The carpet is covered in mysterious stains of indeterminate origin, two twin beds with rumpled sheets pushed against ugly green walls. The radiator is leaking in the corner.

Wrench is sitting on one of the beds, immediately perking up when Numbers enters the room, before seemingly remembering their situation and sheepishly returning to his book.

No sign of Letters.

“Look, Hammer, I’m real _flattered_ you wanted to include me in some weird...cowboy threesome or whatever with your better-looking twin but you didn’t need to _lie_ \--”

“She’s in the bathroom, asshole.” Hammer rolls his eyes, lurking by the door like some kind of glowering redneck statue. He crosses his arms across his chest, shifting his weight from foot to foot, and Numbers frowns. Something must be wrong. Stubborn prick that he is, there’s no way Hammer would let himself look nervous unless he was too freaked to stop himself.

Letters steps out of the bathroom in surprisingly casual clothes--he’s seen her out of her work clothes several times now but it’s a shock each time--and dries her mop of platinum blonde hair with a towel. The curve of her stomach underneath the plain T-shirt is more pronounced than the last time he saw her. Numbers feels more than a little sick at the thought.

“Hey, sweets,” she smirks at him. He can feel Hammer glaring daggers at the back of his head.

“What’s going on?”

Letters strides forward, placing a hand on Wrench’s shoulder to get him to look up from his book, and her grin fades to a somber expression.

“Things have changed. Hammer, tell him.”

The man in question grumbles, uncrossing his arms as he simultaneously talks and signs for his brother’s benefit. Numbers pointedly does not look at Wrench.

“Wrench and I were on a job, and uh…” he trails off, looking uncomfortable. “It went south. I got shot in the head and with the baby, I…”

Numbers raises an eyebrow and puts up a hand to stop him.

“Hold on, I don’t understand what this has to do with me.” 

Letters interjects, lips pulled into a thin grimace. “I need to ask something of you.”

“Of course you do,” he mutters under his breath, fidgeting with his hair absently. “What is it?”

“Fargo gave the twins and I a job. There’s this warehouse in Wisconsin, syndicate out of Madison owns it.”

“And?”

“Apparently they’re starting to get a little too comfortable, pushing their boundaries I guess, and Tripoli’s pissed about it. Wants us to send a message. Y’know, ‘head in a bag’ or whatever.” She lowers her voice to a comically deep octave in an imitation of the man in charge, and Numbers would laugh if the man in question weren’t so terrifying.

“Right, yeah.” From what little interaction he’s ever had with the bosses--and never Tripoli directly, of course--he’s heard that particular phrase quoted countless times. “Why do you need me, though?”

“Official reason is we need somebody from accounting there to make sure everything’s squared away inventory-wise.”

“And the unofficial reason?” Letters and Hammer share a knowing, uncomfortable look. 

Wrench taps him on the knee, frowning.

_Hammer almost died. He’s freaking out about the baby thing. They want to take the money and run._

Numbers’ eyes nearly pop out of his head. 

“Are you both fucking _nuts?_ ”

“Look, we just--”

“Jesus fucking Christ, you kill people for a living, do you not realize what Fargo _does_ to people who leave?!”

“Numbers--”

“And not even leave, you’re gonna fucking steal from them?! Letters, come on, you’re smarter than this!”

“What the hell else am I supposed to do?!” She blurts out, eyes red-rimmed. “Do you think I don’t fucking know that? I was working for them when you were still a fucking car salesman, I’m not an idiot!”

“Letters, if you do this they’re gonna find you and they’re gonna kill you and Hammer and your goddamn baby and then they’re gonna kill me and Wrench for helping you. This is fucking insane and you know it.”

She looks down, face reddening, and crosses her arms. 

Numbers looks at Hammer, rage boiling.

“So what, you’re gonna get us all fucking killed because you got spooked? It’s your fucking job! I know you don’t give a shit about me but what about _Wrench?_ ”

Hammer is visibly embarrassed, his expression growing darker as he clenches his fists.

“It’s none of your goddamn business.”

“You made it my fucking business!”

“Numbers, this life…” Letters sighs. “I love it. And I’m good at it. But things have changed and we can’t keep doing this if we’re gonna have a kid.”

“Then why the _fuck_ are you even having one?”

She slaps him across the face with a resounding crack. Numbers rubs his cheek where she hit him, wincing as Wrench watches with wide eyes.

“Fuck you,” she says through gritted teeth, eyes like steel.

“Yeah, fuck you too, pal.” He turns to Wrench and switches to signing. _Are you seriously going along with this?_

He just shrugs. _He’s my brother._

 _Yeah, but come on. You’re smarter than this, man._ He’s pleading and he knows it, but somehow the thought of Wrench ending up in a shallow grave somewhere stings more than the thought of his own demise.

 _He’s my brother,_ Wrench repeats, his movements slow and deliberate, and this time Numbers understands.

Resignation settles heavy in his stomach like a sinking stone. Fuck, this is really happening.

“You won’t tell Fargo, will you?” Letters sits down next to Wrench on the edge of the bed, staring at Numbers’ face as if gauging his reaction.

“No, of course not. Are you serious? I wouldn’t.”

“Okay,” she says, smiling grimly. “I understand.”

He stares at his hands for a long moment, breathing evenly. In his mind’s eye it is 1976 and his father’s car is sinking to the bottom of the river. He feels like he’s sitting in the back seat, waiting for the water to come rushing in and drown him.

“I’ll do it,” says Numbers.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” They’re all gonna fucking die for this and he knows it, but it’s not like he was living for anything anyways. Fuck it.

He looks up, rubbing his eye, and Wrench is staring back at him. He’s an unknown quantity and yet familiar all at once, his mess of auburn curls sticking up in a way that is both infuriating and endearing, something soft and oddly boyish in his expression.

Yeah. Fuck it.

“I’ll do it,” Numbers repeats, softer this time, and Wrench’s lips curl back into a lopsided smile.


	12. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, this chapter is pretty dark. Warning for ableism, homophobia, mentions of/implied abuse (both physical and sexual), and suicidal ideation/mentions of a past attempt

Kansas, 1990

Wyatt crosses his arms, drawing in on himself against the early spring chill as he leans against the wall. He does his best to look like he’s meant to be there, eyes scanning the empty street, but his heart is beating out of his chest with nerves. It’s been only a few short months since he ran away, and he was certainly no stranger to hunger before, but the cold is different. It’ll only get worse the further north they go, of course, but there’s nothing for them in Texas anymore.

He’s lanky and awkward, hands and feet too big for his beanpole frame, and the malnutrition definitely isn’t helping. Even still, he towers over most people, but paired next to Ethan--all bulk and muscle from spending the last few years in juvie instead of foster care--he feels like a fucking dork.

Ethan keeps telling him he’ll fill out soon enough, give it time, but he doesn’t really believe him if he’s being honest. They’re gonna fucking starve out here, or freeze, and the painful growling of his stomach is rivaled only by the ache in his chest at the thought that maybe he was always going to turn out like this, some weak little thief who’s going to be found frozen on a park bench somewhere and nobody will ever give a shit.

Why would they? It’s not like anyone’s ever cared about him anyways. All he’s ever been is another mouth to feed, or a charity case, or--

Wyatt counts to ten, glancing up at the sky as he takes slow, steady breaths, and tucks his hands under his arms as if hugging himself.

It’s been a few months and although he doesn’t clearly remember the act itself, his wrists haven’t stopped hurting. He’s pretty sure it’s all in his head at this point, but hasn’t it always been? Back before he was healed enough to get rid of the bandages they itched constantly, incessantly, taunting him to tear the wounds open again.

They don’t talk about it. Haven’t since Ethan turned up in his hospital room, rearing to go, and told him to grab his shit and run away. If anyone was ever looking for them they must have given up by now, the state of Texas has bigger things to worry about than an escaped juvie kid and his deaf, suicidal brother.

He’d been surprised to see him, after all they hadn’t seen each other in three goddamn years, but a part of him was disappointed.

It was a stupid thing to hope and he knew it; for all he knows Jerry’s dead or married or locked up or maybe he just didn’t care about Wyatt as much as he’d thought, but that promise he’d made to him nine years ago to come back and save him from this shithole existence had been something to cling to.

When he was a real little kid he had a minor obsession with Peter Pan. Watched the movie enough times that even if he didn’t know what was being said he had the whole thing memorized. Used to beg Ethan to play pretend with him, make believe that they were the lost boys on an adventure. Even dressed up for Halloween as him a couple years until he got beat up by older kids and decided trick or treating was for babies.

That idea that somebody was coming to take him away from his life, from that rundown house and uncaring parents and strange kids covered in their own filth had been a lifeline for years, and long after he realized Jerry probably wasn’t coming back it had still lurked at the back of his mind.

Whatever. In the end it doesn't fucking matter, he’s going to be seventeen soon or he’ll die in the streets, either way he’s too old for fairy tale bullshit.

Wyatt sticks his thumb through a hole in the arm of his army jacket. It’s dirty and threadbare but it keeps him relatively warm, more than any of the other clothes he’s stolen from donation bins over the last few months anyways.

He feels a tap on his shoulder and turns to see Ethan.

_We’re clear. Come on._

The inside of the house is tackier than he would have expected. Lots of wood furnishings, 1970’s-style furniture, and a truly bizarre number of porcelain cats. Like, way more than anyone should ever have. Any number of porcelain cats is too many, in Wyatt’s opinion, but this is beyond excessive.

It belongs to some small time dealer--well, not really--it was the guy’s grandmother’s house, but apparently he never bothered clearing out her stuff after she croaked. From what Ethan’s heard, his stuff should be down in the basement. Normally they don’t break into people’s houses; stealing is a means to an end but this is a bit risky, but supposedly this guy has a good amount of money and they’re in desperate need.

Ethan walks ahead, gesturing for Wyatt to follow. His brother is a big guy, built like a brick shithouse, probably the kind of guy who’s effortlessly intimidating to anyone who doesn’t know about how he wet the bed until fifth grade. How he cried when he lost his favorite stuffed animal. How for years when they were little he’d throw a tantrum any time he had to go somewhere without Wyatt by his side. 

But then, Wyatt thinks, he hasn’t been soft like that in a long time.

Not since their father beat it out of him and started molding him to be the bigoted, miserable alcoholic he’d been before Ethan bashed his brains in.

And then there was _that_. 

No, the kid Ethan used to be was long gone. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, when his brother got meaner and more possessive and started parroting their father, but it never really hit home for him until he was staring up in shock on the garage floor as his twin brother brought down the hammer he’d grabbed in the heat of the moment--again and again and again until their old man’s face looked like a pile of meat.

They’d met each other’s eyes, seeing each other as if for the first time, and for a moment Wyatt was more afraid of Ethan than he’d ever been of their father. Even if it had been for him. Even if he’d had the shit kicked out of him, even if the old man had probably been going to kill him that time, or whenever he decided having a gay son who couldn’t hear wasn’t worth the trouble.

He’d looked at his brother and seen a monster, and then the cops came and he was sent off to a worse place than he’d been before and any time he thought about Ethan he saw his mugshot staring him down.

They don’t talk about that, either, but to be fair there’s a _lot_ of things they don’t talk about now.

The basement is small and cramped and thoroughly lived-in, the walls plastered with lewd posters of half-naked women and the sort of bands Ethan had whined about not being allowed to listen to when they were younger. Real satanic shit. Even now, hundreds of miles from home, they grin conspiratorially at each other as if they’re in danger of being grounded rather than shot for trespassing.

_Do you think he keeps his W-E-E-D down here?_

Wyatt wrinkles his nose disapprovingly. _Since when do you smoke?_

_Fuck you, you don’t know me._

_I know you’re all talk._ Ethan punches him in the arm, trying and failing to stifle a laugh.

They rummage through the guy’s things for a few minutes before Ethan tosses a balled up sock across the room to get Wyatt’s attention.

_Dude, check this shit out._

_Is it the money?_

_Just come look at this._

He crouches next to his brother and frowns. _What is it?_

_Box of pictures and shit. Polaroids._

_So what?_

_So maybe he’s got T-I-T-T-Y P-I-C-S._

Wyatt snorts, rolling his eyes and getting up to go, but Ethan puts a hand on his arm to stop him, eyes wide.

_Holy shit dude, look at this._

_E-T-H-A-N, you know I don’t care about B-O-O-B-S._

_No, seriously, look._

He sits back down, taking a picture from his brother, and does a double take. Bile rises in his throat as he stares at the picture in his hands because it’s been nine years and the details of his face might be hazy in his memory but judging by what tattoos are visible he’s almost certain that the half-naked kid in the picture laying sprawled with a needle in his arm and a hazy, unfocused look in his eyes is _Jerry_.

“Fuck,” he says aloud, turning to look over his shoulder when Ethan punches him gently in the arm.  
Standing at the top of the stairs, shotgun in hand, is a tall, haggard-looking man with long, greasy, poorly-dyed hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. His face is covered in sores and his rotting teeth don’t look like they’ve been brushed in days, if ever.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Ethan slowly gets to his feet, hands up, and Wyatt follows suit. His blood is fucking boiling, looking at this creep and knowing what he does. The picture’s seared to the back of his goddamn eyelids, he can’t stop thinking about it. Fuck, he thinks, Jerry couldn’t have been much older in that picture than he is now--maybe younger, even.

“Look, man--”

“Don’t fucking ‘look, man’ me! What the _fuck_ are you fucking kids doing in my house?”

“We--”

The man abruptly cocks the shotgun. “And who the fuck taught you to go through another man’s shit?!”

Ethan bites his lip, visibly nervous, and Wyatt feels his stomach flop. They’re gonna fucking die down here in this psycho junkie’s basement and for the first time in a while he almost wishes he was back home.

“What’s your problem?” The man jerks his gun at Wyatt, frowning. “Don’t have nothin’ to say for yourself, asshole?”

“He can’t hear you, man, he’s deaf.”

The man laughs, taking a step towards Wyatt, and Ethan tenses, noticeably resisting the urge to get between them as his face gets progressively redder.

“Oh, he’s deaf, is he? You’ve got some goddamn nerve breaking into a man’s house when you can’t even fucking hear.”

He steps closer, the barrel of his gun a foot from his face, and all Wyatt can think is that he’s never going to find out what happens to him, never going to know if he could be happy, and then the man leans in to take a closer look at the two of them and barks out a laugh.

“Hey, I know you two! You’re Dan’s boys, right?” He lowers the gun and Wyatt lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“Yessir,” says Ethan, not taking his eyes off the shotgun as he steps forward to push Wyatt behind him.

“Hoo-ee, you’re a long way from home. Heard about what you did, back in ‘87. Real nasty shit.”

“That it was.” It’s meant as a warning, even Wyatt can tell from the way Ethan is glowering, but the man either doesn’t notice the threat or doesn’t care.

“On the run then, huh?” The glint in his eyes makes sets Wyatt on edge immediately--it’s viscerally predatory and everything in him wants to get the fuck out of here as soon as possible. From the way Ethan glances back at him he can tell he’s thinking the same.

“We should leave.”

“No, no, stay. You see them pictures over there?”

“Yeah.”

“Real pretty, ain’t he? Artsy type. Borrowed his fancy schmancy camera to take ‘em.” He turns to Wyatt, leering at him in a way that makes his skin crawl. “Say, you’re queer, aren’t you?”

“Leave him alone.”

“That’s why your daddy beat you, right?”

“Leave him _alone_.”

“That’s why Rambo here killed him?”

“Get the _fuck_ away from him!” Ethan’s fists are balled at his sides, knuckles white. 

“What the fuck are you gonna do about it?”

“Don’t you fucking touch my brother.”

“What the fuck are you gonna do?” He raises his gun, level with Ethan’s eyes. “Yeah, that’s what I fucking thought.”

Wyatt opens his mouth, closes it, and speaks. He hates doing it, almost never attempts it because _why the fuck should he_ , but he doesn’t want to risk trying to sign with the guy’s gun right there.

“What did you do to him?”

The man frowns, confused. “Shit, kid, you really are deaf. What the fuck is he saying?”

Ethan looks like he’d like to strangle him. “He wants to know what happened to the guy in the pictures.”

That fucking sneer is back on his face again.

“Oh, well why didn’t you say so?”

He takes a step forward so he’s only a few inches away from Wyatt, lowering his gun to do so, and mockingly points at his lips. His breath absolutely reeks, making the teenager’s eyes water.

“He got all greedy, shot up too much of the good stuff. Choked on his own vomit like the junkie piece of shit he was. I dumped him outside a hospital but from what I hear he died like a fucking dog.”

Wyatt isn’t able to hold back an enraged shout as he slams his fist into the other man’s nose, then kicks him repeatedly in the ribs as he crumples to the floor, howling in pain. Ethan stares at his brother, impressed, and they bolt up the stairs as the man continues to scream obscenities from the basement.

They skip town that night and agree never to talk about what happened down there.

In a few years’ time they won’t know _how_ to talk to each other anymore.

In a few years’ time there won’t be anything left that’s safe to talk about, any part of their lives that isn’t tainted by the knowledge that there’s nothing left of the kids they were.

And when that day comes they won’t say anything at all.


	13. Chapter Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really not a fan of how Numbers' characterization turned out this chapter yikes

Madison, 1995

For the umpteenth time since breakfast, Numbers wonders where exactly his life went so goddamn wrong. He shrinks down to the ground as bullets whiz over his head, grateful for what little cover he has, and fumbles with his gun as he reloads. Looking across the fray to where Wrench is pressed against a shipping container, he waves to get the larger man’s attention.

_Two guys, 3 o’clock, about a yard back. Big guns._

Wrench nods, lips curling back into a cheeky grin. _Mine’s bigger._

Numbers rolls his eyes, then sits up and turns to return fire.

When he ducks back under cover he signals to Wrench, who takes out the two goons before they can get the drop on him.

_Where the hell are the others?_

_I don’t know,_ Wrench shrugs, and shoots around the corner again.

Numbers inches to the right, keeping as low as possible, and peers around the corner before signaling to Wrench again.

_Center’s clear. Might be more under cover, though._

It is then that he realizes he’s run out of bullets.

This is fucked. This is irrevocably fucked. Numbers has no clue how he let them talk him into doing this; they’re all gonna fucking die here just because goddamn Hammer _had_ to go and get himself shot in the head like the dumb shit he is.

He looks over to Wrench, sees anxiety spelled out in the set of his shoulders, and knows that the other man knows it too. It makes something settle thick in his throat that feels just a bit like regret. Numbers is a man who knows regret like the back of his hand, is the product of his parents’ regret, his whole damn life is shaped by it, but he feels it now more poignantly than ever.

“I should have called,” he says aloud, just above a whisper, and it’s drowned out by gunfire. Wrench can’t hear him, obviously, but a part of him is afraid that if he said it any louder he himself would hear, would have to acknowledge the bitter sting of longing.

And so he swallows his regret, sets aside the persistent emptiness inside of him that’s been screaming to be heard his whole damn life, and jumps from cover.

Behind him, Wrench swears aloud and tries to cover him as he sprints towards one of the fallen guards. A bullet whizzes by, narrowly missing his head, and another and another missing him by some minor miracle--as if he were the sort to deserve such a thing--and he snatches a discarded assault rifle from the ground before diving behind the nearest cover.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, laughing incredulously as he finds the gun still has most of its ammunition and that he himself is not full of holes. “Fuuuucking _Christ_.”

A part of him is almost disappointed.

A part of him would have been okay with dying just then.

A part of him knows it’s what he deserves.

But a much bigger, more primal part of him can’t find it in him to care that he’s the worst kind of scumbag, doesn’t give a damn that he’s deserved a painful death since the moment he shot a fucking kid, because his heart is beating out of his chest and the depth of his self hatred is rivaled only by his all-consuming fear of dying.

As hard as he’s tried for more than half his life to smash Jerry Menuek to pieces, to annihilate every trace of himself, to stop thinking and feeling and being so _fucking_ angry and scared and lonely all the time, he’s been clinging to existence all along, hanging on by his fingernails, because he knows that the world will not stop once he’s gone.

He knows that nothing he’s done, nothing he will ever do, nothing he could ever do will make a difference in the end, that nobody really will, that ultimately they’re all just animals that are dumb enough to think they know anything and the kid he shot would’ve just grown up to be another nobody with a shitty job and a wife and kids of his own. 

But he also knows that in the end he is nothing if not a coward.

And so he catches his breath and waits for his heart rate to even out again and the world to stop spinning, and then he turns and shoots.

It is then that he sees Letters, descending on the complete and utter shitshow of an operation with an RPG over her shoulder, and in the moment before he remembers to plug his ears he thinks that he could kiss her right now.

The whole warehouse seems to shake with the impact of it, a cluster of guards reduced to splatter and meat, and Hammer follows her with a machine gun to take out what’s left.

He breathes a sigh of relief that the cavalry’s finally come and does his part to pick off stragglers before collapsing in exhaustion behind his cover. 

Once the dust is cleared Wrench is by his side in a second, absolutely fuming.

_You’re a fucking I-D-I-O-T._ He spells out the last word slowly and deliberately, face almost purple with anger.

_I know._ He stares up at the hitman from where he’s slumped on the floor, willing himself not to remember the last time he was crouched before Wrench like this. It doesn’t work. He grimaces at the thought, feeling his pants tighten.

_Stupid fucking asshole. Almost got us both fucking killed._

_Fuck you, I was out of A-M-M-O. Had to do something._

“Fuck,” breathes Wrench, shaking his head. He offers Numbers a hand and helps him to his feet, moving unconsciously to dust off the older man’s front as if he were a goddamn child before Numbers stops him, face reddening.

They’re right back to where they were, staring eachother down, both equally embarrassed by the fact that they give a damn, both too stubborn to be the first to crack and admit as much.

“Yoo-hoo, Numbers! When you’re done drooling, come check out the back office!” Letters calls, waving them over. She’s breathing heavily, more exhausted by the fighting than she used to get. Somewhere behind her Hammer hovers, aimlessly protective as ever.

The back office is smaller than one would expect, littered with discarded paperwork and riddled with bullet holes. It doesn’t take them long to find the safe and when they do Numbers steps up to the plate.

While he sets to work cracking it, Wrench and Hammer go off to stand guard and watch for anyone potentially arriving, and Letters sits on the table and takes apart her pistol before putting it back together. She’s nervous, that much is obvious, but Numbers doesn’t know what to say to her. What’s safe.

He considers not saying anything.

In the end, though, letting things go isn’t in his nature.

“So. You and Hammer.”

“Ooh, fun. You’re on about _that_ again.”

“You still sure about this whole leaving thing?” He waves a hand dismissively as he works, hoping she doesn’t notice the way he tenses as he asks.

Letters smirks, swinging her legs back and forth, and wipes away a red smudge at the corner of her mouth with a manicured finger.

“You could always come with us, you know.”

“No I couldn’t.”

“Sure you could. The more the merrier, babe.”

He pauses in his efforts to crack the safe, looking up at her. “You’re avoiding the question.”

“Hm. Suppose I am.” She looks away, face determinedly set into a disinterested expression. It doesn’t fool him for a second but he knows better than to press.

Numbers has no idea what to say to her anymore.

This is a mistake and he knows it. It’s not that he’s jealous of her, jealous of Hammer, jealous that they’re leaving this shitty life behind to start over somewhere warm. Because he isn’t.

It’s that when he looks at her, ready to leave the life she knows to run away with a man she could see herself loving one day but doesn’t already, a baby she never planned for on the way, he sees his mother.

He sees her and he remembers all the many, many wine bottles overflowing the trash, remembers her passing out when watching him so often she had to hire a nanny, remembers the way she’d look at him as if he’d consciously decided to ruin her life by being born.

Some people just aren’t meant to be parents. She wasn’t. He isn’t. And he suspects Letters isn’t, either, no matter how much she talks about changing.

But in the end it isn’t up to him, never has been, and so he finds himself crouched before a safe in a warehouse back office in Wisconsin, about to send his best and only friend off to a life of misery.

At least it won’t be so goddamned cold in Mexico. So there’s that.

“Where’d you get the rocket launcher?”

“Guy I knew a while back was real into guns, gave it to me for free.”

“Gun like that for _free_? Damn, you must have made quite the impression.”

“You could say that,” she purrs, the grin on her face unabashedly lecherous.

He exhales a laugh, finding himself grinning despite everything.

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”

Letters lets her head rest on her shoulder, examining her nails. “I’ll miss you, you know. When we’re in Mexico.”

He grunts in acknowledgement, pretending to be too focused on the task at hand to reciprocate.

She watches him out of the corner of her eye, lips twitching upward. “Especially your hairy ass. Would you believe Hammer _waxes_.”

Numbers can’t stop himself from laughing, trying and failing to disguise it by coughing into his hand, but he grins from ear to ear in spite of himself. 

“God damn you, woman,” he shakes his head, terribly fond. He’ll miss her too, even if he can’t bring himself to say as much.

She smiles, pleased, and for the first time since the reveal of her pregnancy it actually meets her eyes.

Hammer looms in the doorway, appearing from nowhere like a giant ginger ghost.

“What the fuck’s taking so long?”

“Fuck off, I’m almost done.” Numbers rolls his eyes, sharing a knowing look with Letters.

“Aren’t you supposed to be good at this kind of shit?”

“It is _insane_ how much better Wrench is than you. At, like, everything.”

“Bite me.”

“Especially sex.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“The fact that he has a twin and that that twin is _you_ is a goddamn travesty.”

“You’re fucking disgusting..”

“Yeah, well, you’re a shit-for-brains neanderthal.”

“Boys, boys,” Letters rolls her eyes, growing tired of their bickering. “Just crack the god damn thing so we can get out of here.”

Numbers hums his agreement, pointedly ignoring Hammer until he leaves.

“Why him of all people?”

“Oh, y’know…” she trails off, avoiding his gaze.

“No, I really don’t,” he shakes his head.

“He can be sweet when you get to know him. Good lay, too.”

“Uh huh?”

“Oh, shut up. I saw you making eyes at Wrench earlier.”

He feels the backs of his ears burning as he continues his work, not looking at her.

“I wasn’t making eyes at Wrench.”

“If it makes you feel any better he was making eyes at you too.”

It does. God damn her.

“Fuck off, no he wasn’t.”

“Are you kidding? He’s like a giant puppy. A giant, weirdly sexy deaf cowboy puppy.”

“Why is it you’re having a kid with the angry, punchy, assholish one then if Wrench is so goddamn great?”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Not at all.”

“Then you’re dumber than Hammer.”

“Low blow,” he laughs.

“That it is.”

“Shit--I think I’ve almost got it--” Numbers hears a click and finally opens the safe, letting out a low whistle. Inside are stacks of cash, more than he’s seen in one place in quite a while.

“Holy shit,” says Letters, a grin spreading across her face. “You’ve gotta be fucking shitting me. Is that _ours_?”

“It is now,” says Numbers, stepping back and running a hand through his hair. “It is now.”


	14. Chapter Thirteen

Madison, 1995

It’s cold outside but not as cold as Wrench had expected. He leans against the side of the warehouse, arms crossed against the chill, and watches his breaths float away from him. The sky’s that sort of grey when the world can’t seem to decide if it’s winter or spring, afternoon or evening. Everything in this goddamn place is grey, he thinks with a pang of bitterness, and glances over to his brother.

Wrench can feel anxiety coming off of Hammer in waves. He’s shifting from foot to foot, practically vibrating with nervous energy, and it’d be almost funny if this weren’t such a big deal. If it weren’t so final.

He taps his brother on the shoulder to get his attention, hesitating a moment before signing. 

_Are you sure you want to do this?_

Hammer rolls his eyes, slipping back into his usual standoffishness as if he’d never been vulnerable and afraid in the first place.

_Yeah, obviously. Why wouldn’t I be?_

_Come on, you know this is really fucking dangerous._

_No shit. What’s your point?_

Wrench exhales through his nose, steadying himself, and prepares for the fight he knows is coming.

_My point is maybe Numbers was right._

Hammer throws his hands up in exasperation, face reddening with anger.

_Of course you fucking side with him._

_What’s that supposed to mean?_

_I’ve seen the way you look at him. He’s a fucking S-C-U-M-B-A-G._

His fists clench at his sides involuntarily. That probably shouldn’t have made him as defensive as it did and he knows he’s only proving his brother’s point but Wrench can’t help it. God, he’s in too fucking deep. 

_Look, I know you don’t like him, but--_

_No, I don’t fucking like him. He’s old and he’s an A-S-S-H-O-L-E and he’s gonna hurt you because you’re too goddamn trusting._

_I’m a fucking adult, E-T-H-A-N. I can take care of myself._ He storms off, heading back inside the warehouse. Hammer doesn’t stop him.

Wrench finds that there’s a lot he’d like to say to his brother if he could only find the right words to say it. He never has, really, but he’d never needed them when they were kids--like some freaky twin wavelength bullshit, they just got each other, until one day they just didn’t. 

He’d like to tell Hammer that he’s afraid to be alone, that he doesn’t know who he is without him, that the three years they spent apart were the most miserably aimless of his life, but his hands won’t move into the right shapes and he loves his brother but he hasn’t understood him in a _long_ time.

He’d like to think that Hammer is just as afraid of living without him.

It’s selfish of him and he knows it, but a part of him desperately wants his twin to be heartbroken without him. 

An even more shameful part is relieved to be rid of him.

Because in a lot of ways his brother’s been a stranger since that night in the hospital, with this great unspoken thing between them that they’ve run out of time to deal with, and neither wants to talk about the suicide attempt or their father’s death or the fact that Hammer’s been dragging him down with him for years but that doesn’t mean those things aren’t still there.

He hasn’t understood Hammer in a long time but Hammer has never really understood him.

There’s a lump in Wrench’s throat and his face feels hot but he’s not about to fucking cry in front of his asshole brother even if he is leaving him behind, abandoning him in this life they’ve dug out for themselves that he never fucking asked for.

He never wanted this. But all his life he’s been half of a whole and so when he was treading water with no sign of land and his brother grabbed his ankle he let him pull him down into the depths of his darkness and now there’s no way out because he’s good at it and he likes it but he doesn’t know if he can do it if he’s by himself.

Wrench feels a hand at the crook of his arm, hovering awkwardly as if hesitating to touch him, and turns to find Numbers watching him with the caution one would a rabbit about to bolt.

_You O-K, big guy?_

His lips quirk upwards in spite of himself at the nickname and the vice grip of regret on his chest begins to loosen, replaced by something warm. It’s nice. He wishes he could feel like that all the time, even if it is highly embarrassing.

He’s fucked.

But then again, he’s always been fucked.

(And if he could get fucked by Numbers, _well_...)

Wrench catches himself staring and clears his throat, schooling his expression into something neutral. 

_Are you?_

Numbers smiles grimly. It doesn’t meet his eyes, but then again it never really does. There’s something bitter in it, something hurt, and Wrench thinks that maybe he’s not the only one being abandoned here.

“You finally crack that damn thing?” Hammer grumbles, raising an eyebrow at his brother’s proximity to the older man. Numbers scowls, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, no thanks to you. Come on, Letters is probably almost done counting it.”

When they return to the back office she’s grinning from ear to ear, gesturing wildly with a wad of twenties. 

“Holy fucking shit, you won’t believe this, there’s a quarter million here!”

Hammer’s eyes widen. “Are you fucking serious?”

Letters nods enthusiastically, barking out a slightly unhinged laugh. “Two hundred fifty thousand fucking dollars, on my mother’s grave--”

He’s grinning too, the first time Wrench has seen him smile in months, as he pulls her into a bear hug, lifting her off the ground in the process. 

“Fuck! We’re gonna be fucking rich!”

Wrench looks to Numbers at his left, where the shorter man is watching the couple cooly. Try as he might, he can’t seem to get a read on him. 

Numbers has eyes like a shark, flat and dead but with a spark of something enormous, something dangerous. He wishes he could be like that; people are terrified by him because he’s huge and silent and mean-looking but there’s no finesse to that. He wishes he could be intimidating in the way that Numbers is, the devil hiding in plain sight. It’s a shame that the man’s an accountant, honestly, because there’s a darkness in him the likes of which Wrench has only seen in other hitmen.

It should scare him. It really, really should.

It probably says something unfortunate about Wrench as a person that he finds it really fucking hot instead.

Because he knows that that isn’t all there is to Numbers, no matter how much he might try to pretend; when he looks at him he can’t help but remember the night they met, how wild and disheveled and utterly wrecked the other man was with his hair a mess and his pupils blown to hell and his top button undone--he’d been high out of his mind, sure, but there was something soft about him that Wrench hasn’t seen since and he can’t help but want to see Numbers like that again.

He quickly tears his eyes away, feeling his ears burning. 

This is stupid. 

This is really fucking stupid and he’s stupid for even thinking about it because he’s a grown man who kills people for a living but Numbers is probably going to hurt him. 

As if this isn’t painful already. 

They’re somewhere between strangers and lovers and because he’s seen that side of Numbers just the once but it can never happen again he’s not sure that things will ever be normal between them.

Even worse, he isn’t sure that he actually _wants_ things to be normal between them.

Wrench glances at Numbers again and this time the shorter man holds his gaze.

He doesn’t understand Numbers but he thinks he’d like to.

He thinks he’d like to know him.

He thinks he’s in over his fucking head here.

When he turns away again, watching Letters and Hammer as they marvel in their newfound wealth, he is sure of it. They’re out of their goddamned element. This was a stupid idea. But then he sees the way Hammer looks at Letters, as if he were a man dying of thirst and she was a lake, and he thinks that maybe it doesn’t matter.

Wrench knows he’s selfish. He knows it’s wrong for him to want Hammer to be lonely and miserable with him, and that as much as his brother is holding him back he’s guilty of the same.

And maybe Hammer could be happy after all.

Maybe this is his chance at it.

Coming from where they did, this sort of opportunity has always seemed miles out of reach, but here it is.

A part of him still wonders, when he looks at his brother, when he looks at Letters, when he looks at her steadily growing stomach, if their father has tainted the rest of their lives.

He wonders if Hammer will be a good father.

He wonders if he would be a good father if it was him.

Ethan was always desperate for their old man’s approval, parroting his bullshit without a second thought, even going so far as to bully Wyatt from time to time no matter how guilty he’d be afterwards, how he’d curl up next to his twin in bed and beg for forgiveness.

In his mind’s eye they’re fifteen and Ethan is holding the hammer and it’s covered in blood and brains and there’s a mass of meat and shattered bone where their father’s face used to be.

Maybe, he thinks, mouth utterly dry. Maybe Hammer will be better.

He loves his brother but he is afraid.

Because what darkness he sees in himself lives tenfold in his brother.

Numbers taps him on the elbow and offers him a cigarette, his own clenched between his teeth. Wrench shakes his head. The other man is obviously tense, probably just as unsure about this whole situation as he is, and who can blame him?

They’re stealing from the goddamn syndicate.

Two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Fuck.

He hasn’t seen so much money in his whole damn life and here it is but he’s put enough morons in the ice for trying to fuck over Fargo that he knows what’s waiting for them all if they get caught.

Maybe, he thinks, his chest feeling hot and tight. Maybe they’ll be okay.

Or maybe they’re all going to die horrible deaths.

Maybe they’ll torture him to find out where Hammer is, maybe they’ll kill him to try and get Numbers to talk, maybe this whole thing will be for nothing in the end ‘cause they’ll all be six feet under and they’ll deserve it too for being dumb enough to get involved in this life in the first place.

He rubs the inside of his wrist, breath catching in his throat, and decides that he doesn’t fucking care anymore.

If he ends up at the bottom of a lake so fucking be it.

Wrench knows that he crossed that line years ago, that there’s no way his death will be anything but violent now, that maybe it was always going to be that way.

And so he helps Hammer pack duffel bags full of money and load them into the back of his car--it occurs to him that he’ll need to get a new one--and tries to pretend like this isn’t the last time he’ll ever see him.

Letters and Numbers hang back, talking about something in that weird, roundabout way of theirs while she bums a cigarette, and Wrench finds himself watching them for a long moment before looking back to his brother. Hammer’s staring at the bags of money, hand on the trunk as if about to close it, his lips pressed together into a thin white line.

Wrench closes the trunk, Hammer blinking as if he’d forgotten he was even there.

_Do you think I’m making a mistake?_ He signs slowly, hesitantly, and for the first time in a long time Wrench recognizes something of the kid he grew up with.

He doesn’t answer for a long moment. 

_Do you remember_ he begins, then hesitates. _Christmas when we were kids?_

Hammer grins, eyes lighting up at the memory. _We used to throw rocks at trains._

Wrench smiles, eyes crinkling at the edges, and a desperate, breathy laugh escapes him. 

_And they’d have those specials on T-V._

_Those were fucking awful._ Wrench punches him in the arm, grinning.

_Fuck off, R-U-D-O-L-P-H was great._

_Remember how we’d steal shit from the other kids?_

_We were such little assholes._

The smiles start to fade when they think about their foster siblings. Where they all ended up. That fucking basement in Kansas.

Wrench leans against the trunk of the car. _Does it snow in Mexico?_

_How the hell should I know?_

_If it does you should take your kid sledding._

Hammer snorts, scratching the side of his face. _Letters thinks it’s gonna be a boy._

_What do you think?_

_I don’t know. I kind of hope she’s wrong, though._

_What if it’s twins?_

_Jesus fucking Christ, don’t jinx it. We were goddamn monsters._

Wrench’s lips twitch upwards thinking about it. They really were awful once he got old enough and confident enough to do more than just sit in the corner all day, reading. Their father never could beat it out of them, not that he tried--no, acting up meant they were men, despite how it drove their mother up a wall--it was when they were quiet that he had a problem.

He remembers how they used to dress up like cowboys and beat the shit out of each other, go camping every weekend, eat dirt and fry ants and play hockey in the street until somebody broke something.

A part of him misses that; as much of a hell as the rest of their childhood was, he and Hammer always did have fun.

But then he also remembers how he’d get kicked out of the house nearly every week for something or another and make the long, lonely walk to the library to hide amongst the shelves and make himself as small as possible. He remembers his stolen library card, how he’d have to hide books under his bed so his father didn’t think he was a pansy. Or tell him he’s too fucking dumb for that shit. He remembers how sometimes Ethan would join in, eager for approval.

_You should write. When you’re in Mexico. Send me a postcard or something._

_Yeah, I should._ They both know he won’t.

And then Letters and Numbers are making their way over to the car and they don’t hug or shake hands or whatever but Wrench isn’t sure what he really expected because _of course_ they don’t, they’ve never been the type for that sort of thing. 

He sees his brother pull Numbers aside as they glare at each other, arguing at a whisper.

Letters climbs up on the trunk of the car, crossing her legs, and leers at him.

He’s not sure how he feels about her. Never liked her much, but then he’s never really talked to her since she’s the only one in their little group who barely knows any sign language.

She punches him on the arm to get his attention.

“Take care of Numbers, alright? He’s a dumb asshole but he’s also really bad at looking out for himself. Needs someone watching his six.”

He nods. 

“Appreciate it. We ready to go, babe?” She calls out to Hammer, who joins her at the car, leaving Numbers standing around with an unreadable expression on his face, eyebrows drawn together intensely.

Wrench steps away from the car. He and Hammer don’t look at each other. They’ve said all they need to say, all they know how to say, all they _can_ say.

Once his brother and Letters have climbed into the front seats, Numbers walks over to stand beside him as they watch the car drive away, leaving them in the dust.

_Isn’t that your car?_

_Yeah. Gotta buy a new one._

Numbers nods slowly, taking a long drag of his cigarette before dropping it and grinding out the butt with his shoe.

_I’ll call A-U-S-S-I-E. Tell him they screwed us, took off with the money._

As he turns to leave a thought occurs to Wrench and he grabs his arm to stop him. Numbers freezes, looking startled at the touch, so he takes his hand away.

_We should shoot each other._

_What the fuck are you talking about?_

He exhales, exasperated, and signs choppily but deliberately.

_So it’s believable. F-A-R-G-O needs to buy that they screwed us over and took it, so we need to look like we were actually screwed over._

Numbers claps him on the back and grimaces, looking utterly miserable. _Good thinking. This fucking sucks._

_Sucks a lot less than a shallow grave._

They walk inside, elbows brushing together, but neither thinks to widen the distance between them.

_Let’s get our story straight,_ Wrench signs, glancing around the warehouse. _So we killed all the guards and then what?_

_Maybe they shot us after I got the safe open and we counted up the money?_

_Makes sense. You go over to the office door, I’ll stay out in the general warehouse area. So it looks like I was standing guard or something._

Numbers does as he’s told. _This good?_

Wrench nods. He really fucking hates this idea. Sure he’s been shot before, but it’s not exactly a good time, and he doesn’t really want to shoot Numbers either. He breathes in and out, trying to steel himself for it. _I’ll do your shoulder, you do my leg. Lower if you can. So it won’t hit an artery._

_Why the hell am I getting it in the shoulder?_

_I’m Hammer’s brother. You’d be the one they’d actually try to kill._

_Fuck you, man, I’m Letters’ best friend._

Wrench groans, getting progressively more annoyed. _It doesn’t fucking matter! F-A-R-G-O doesn’t give a shit if you signed a goddamn blood pact, that’s just how they’re gonna see it._

He pulls out his pistol, losing patience, and shoots Numbers in the shoulder. The older man crumples to the ground, clutching at the wound as he cries out in pain.

“FUCK! You fucking asshole!”

After a long moment of writhing on the floor he props himself up on his elbow, steadying his aim and Wrench squeezes his eyes shut.

He topples to the ground like a load of bricks, shouting even though he can’t hear it, and curls in on himself to press at the wound in his lower leg, swearing profusely.

When he opens his eyes Numbers is reaching for his phone, hand shaking as he makes the call. Wrench has no idea what he’s fucking saying.

He lets his head rest against the cool ground and waits for reinforcements to arrive, feeling emptier than ever before.


	15. Chapter Fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the change in rating ;)

Fargo, 1995

Numbers grimaces, sweat beading on his brow as he peels off the bandages on his chest, stained brown with drying blood. He runs his fingers gingerly across the neat, puckered scar where Wrench shot him, and exhales sharply. 

“Shit,” He sighs, and crumples the discarded bandages in his fist. Looking at the thing, he wonders why having been shot for the first time doesn’t feel more important. It should be a big deal. After all, most people don’t get shot at all. And yet for whatever reason, standing in front of the mirror and looking at the pink spot where the wound healed over, at the dark circles under his eyes, all he can think about is how he’s gonna need to get another tattoo to cover the damn thing up. Something weird, he thinks, something Letters would have approved of.

In the weeks since she left, he keeps finding himself dialing her number before he remembers. Fuck. He’d known his life was empty, truly empty, but hadn’t considered the sheer depth of that emptiness until he found himself devoid of the company of probably the only person on Earth he can stand to be around.

Numbers sighs heavily and pulls a thin T-shirt over his head. He looks like a fucking mess. Which is about right, since he feels like shit too. As much as he thought he’d welcome time off work, stewing in his apartment for the past few weeks has been fucking miserable. It’s not so much that he misses the job--not having to listen to Aussie’s stories, for one, has been _wonderful_ \--but left to his own devices he feels on edge, like he’s missing something.

He’d felt it then, lying on the cold hard ground, when he hung up the phone and sprawled there, listening to Wrench grunt with pain as the larger man curled into the fetal position, cradling his leg. It was a weird feeling, surreal almost, but as he stared at his turned back he felt like time was slowing somehow. Felt like forever before help came. Maybe it was forever, he thinks, maybe they both bled out and this is some kind of shitty purgatory.

If this is what being dead is like, color him fucking disappointed.

Numbers opens the medicine cabinet and produces a bottle of pills, pours out a few into his hand--more than he probably should take, but who’s counting anyways?--and holds them in his mouth, running his tongue against the bitter taste as he cups his hand in the flowing water from the sink and washes them down. He wipes his mouth with the side of his hand, glancing up at his reflection, and does a double take.

“Oh, fuck. No no no no--” he leans in closer, eyes wide. “Fuck!”

A goddamn grey hair. He’s turning into his father.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” he grumbles, plucking it with haste. “I’m thirty fucking three.”

It’s the stress, it has to be; he doesn’t remember the last time he had a good night’s sleep, between all the pregnancy drama and his work and Wrench’s stupid fucking face keeping him awake at night.

God damn it. God fucking damn it. He’s not a good person but there’s no way he’s bad enough to deserve to start going grey this early.

Just as he resolves to buy some hair dye the next time he goes to the store, there’s a knock at the door. Numbers freezes, holding his breath. There’s no good reason for anyone to be coming to see him so late, or at all, really. Not since Letters stopped barging into his apartment at two in the morning so they could go get drunk or high or laid.

He makes his way to the toilet and lifts the lid on the backing, removing the pistol he keeps taped to its underside. Walking carefully to the front door, he steps with purpose, keeping his footfalls light and as close to silent as he can manage, then presses to the wall next to the door.

It’s paranoia, he knows that, he’s a goddamned accountant for Chrissakes, but there’s no fucking way he’s getting killed wearing boxers.

Numbers looks through the peephole and relaxes, stowing his weapon on the radiator by the door as he goes to open it.

 _Are you drunk?_ He stares, incredulous, as Wrench leans against the wall, cheeks flushed and eyes glazed over. The taller man’s lips curl back into a lopsided grin that makes Numbers’ insides flip-flop as he nods, looking sheepish. Numbers steps aside to let him in with a sigh, rolling his eyes.

Wrench limps over to the couch and collapses.

 _Thought you quit drinking._ After all, the man’s got such a stick up his ass the idea of him loosening up enough to get drunk at all is mind-boggling. Okay, that isn’t fair, but neither is getting shot in the fucking shoulder.

 _I did._ Wrench is watching him unabashedly, the depth of his want spelled out in the look on his face. He’s never seemed so hungry. 

Numbers crosses his arms, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, before joining him on the couch with a heavy sigh. He knows where this is going, knows he’s probably going to do something tonight that he’ll regret in the morning, but can’t find it in himself to care.

He grimaces. _Does your leg still hurt?_

Wrench shrugs, but he’s not fooling anyone. Numbers saw how heavily he was favoring it when he came in.

 _I’ll get you some ice._ He gets up and heads over to the fridge, keeping his back turned to Wrench so the other man can’t protest. Numbers leans against the sink as he fills a small bag with ice cubes, and glances over to the couch.

Wrench is sitting with his arm flung over the top of the couch, his bad leg propped up on a stack of magazines on the coffee table, flicking idly through the channels. He looks like hell--dark circles like bruises under his eyes, hair in disarray, but Numbers can’t help but trace the line of hi jaw with his eyes. He exhales sharply through his nose, looking up at the ceiling. 

“God damn it,” Numbers says aloud, before crossing the room again.

 _Here._ He sits down on the couch, offering the bag of ice, which Wrench takes reluctantly, watching him from the corner of his eye.

 _Thanks._ When Wrench does the sign, Numbers frowns. He isn’t sure why, but something about the gesture is weirdly familiar. It’s the motion, he decides--in his drunkenness Wrench signs it as forcefully as if he were blowing him a kiss and maybe it’s in his head but he finds himself wracking his brain trying to figure out where he’s seen it before.

He leans back in his seat, trying to be as casual as possible, but every muscle in his body is tensed and he’s _very_ aware of Wrench’s arm, resting inches away from the back of his neck. Numbers snorts when he sees what Wrench has changed the channel to-- _Hang ‘em High_ is on, because of course Wrench would pick some cowboy shit like that. The credits flash on screen as Clint Eastwood dangles from a tree and he rolls his eyes at the rapt expression on Wrench’s face.

“Yee fucking haw,” he mutters, smirking, and Wrench punches him on the arm, fighting back his own grin. He’s beyond excited, like a goddamned kid and it’s more endearing than Numbers would care to admit.

When a man on a horse comes by and cuts him down, saves his life, because obviously the hero’s not gonna die in the first five fucking minutes, Numbers raises both eyebrows. The man on the screen grabs unconscious Clint by his pants and lifts his lower half into the air again and again to get him to start breathing again but the way it’s framed, _well_. Clint’s expression looks downright filthy and Numbers clenches his teeth, feeling a tightening in his pants. Shit.

He looks at Wrench, more than a little panicked, to see the larger man’s attention still fully on the screen.

 _”Some people calls this hell but you’re still in Oklahoma territory,”_ the nameless cowboy slurs, and as the music starts to play Numbers glances down to see Wrench pitching a tent of his own.

His mouth goes immediately dry, and when he looks up again Wrench is staring him down, a smirk playing at his lips.

Numbers freezes, a little voice in his head panicking, as Wrench leans over and presses his lips to his. It’s brief, soft and surprisingly hesitant, and ends after only a moment when Wrench pulls back, an embarrassed expression on his face. He’s lifting his hands, probably about to apologize, when something in Numbers snaps and he closes the gap between them, buries his fingers into Wrench’s curls as their lips crash together. 

He feels like he’s fucking starving, wants Wrench more than he’s wanted anyone in his goddamn life, and he’s sick of dancing around the issue like they have been since the night they met. 

If this thing ends with them both in a shallow grave, at least he can say he had him.

Wrench grins, pulling Numbers half onto his lap, and starts undoing his belt as Numbers helps him out of that stupid fucking jacket, tossing it onto the floor. It’s awkward as hell, especially with both their recent injuries, probably even more awkward than it was the first time they did this two years ago, but they’ve both been wanting it for ages and Numbers hasn’t gotten laid in months.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he huffs out an incredulous laugh, dragging a hand down his face.

 _What?_ Wrench frowns up at him, looking absolutely fucking gorgeous, and Numbers’ hand cups the side of his face, stroking his cheek with his thumb more affectionately than he means to. It’s an unconscious thing, he doesn’t even really think about it, but Wrench leans into the touch and it makes something inside his chest tighten.

“Fargo’s gonna kill us. You know that, right?” 

Wrench stares at him blankly, raising an eyebrow.

_What the hell are you looking at me like that for?_

_You’re a fucking idiot, you know that?_ He does. Of course he does. If he were a smarter man he wouldn’t be doing this. But Wrench doesn’t give him the chance to say as much, his breath hot against Numbers’ collarbone as he nibbles and sucks at the pale of his neck, making Numbers’ breath catch in his throat. He moves downward, kissing the scar from where he shot him as he glances up at Numbers with a perverse little smirk on his face.

“Fuck,” Numbers says aloud, startled almost, as he sets to work unbuckling Wrench’s jeans. He taps Wrench on the shoulder to get his attention and when the larger man pulls back, pupils shot to shit with want, he fights a grin and tells him to take off his pants. 

As Wrench wriggles out of his tight jeans, Numbers hastily pulls his shirt over his head, nearly entangling himself in his hurry to get the damn thing off before tossing it to the floor beside Wrench’s jacket. The next thing he knows, Wrench’s tongue is in his mouth and his large hand is wrapped around his cock and he’s making really fucking embarrassing noises that he’s beyond thankful Wrench can’t hear.

“Oh--shit, Wrench--” He’s rock hard already; nobody’s touched him like this in what feels like forever, certainly not Wrench, and it’s just as great as he remembered.

When their lips finally part Numbers straddles the larger man and Wrench’s arms encircle him and they both grin like at each other like a couple of horny goddamn teenagers before Wrench turns him over and they start fucking in earnest. 

And so it happens--right there on his threadbare, second-hand couch in the shitty apartment with a draft as the movie drones on in the background--that their two years of circling each other, leaving things unsaid, like how for weeks after their first time Numbers could vividly recall the way Wrench’s thick cock filled him up and the immodest sounds he made as he came and the way he looked at him like he’d brought him the moon on a goddamn string when it was all said and done, came to an end.

Stars burst behind Numbers’ eyes as he finishes, breathing ragged, and if he could have came again he would have at the sound Wrench makes, deep and nearly guttural, as he comes inside of him, his fingernails digging into Numbers’ hips and ass.

A stupid, embarrassing whimper escapes Numbers when Wrench pulls out, and he’s glad the other man can’t hear him do it but at this point, still coming down, he can’t find it in himself to really care all that much. He reorients himself, collapsing against the couch with a heavy sigh, and runs a hand through his already mussed-up hair.

He’s flushed all over, feels warm and safe and practically fucking giddy, but beside him Wrench has gone still, watching warily with that same goddamn stare he always does. 

_What?_ Numbers signs, half-assed. Wrench is still looking at him expectantly, and then Numbers realizes that it’s because he doesn’t know where they stand, if Numbers is going to kick him out this time.

Numbers doesn’t really know, himself.

He bites his lip, unsure of what to do, before picking his boxers off the ground and standing up to pull them back on. He can feel Wrench’s eyes on him still and heat rises to his cheeks.

_J-E-R-G-E-N says they’re making us partners._

Wrench nods slowly, his jaw clenching. _Makes sense. Nobody else knows ASL._

 _This was a bad idea._ He can barely look at him as he’s saying it, can see the disappointment in Wrench’s face before he schools his expression into something neutral, and feels a tug of regret deep in his chest.

 _Whatever you say, Numbers._ Wrench starts grabbing his own clothes off the floor, pointedly not looking at him as he does so, and Numbers taps him on the shoulder, despite the part of him that still has common sense screaming for him to just shut the fuck up and let it be done with.

Wrench looks up at him, something hopeful in his eyes, and Numbers caves.

He’s a weak, weak man.

_Lucky for us, I’m full of bad ideas._

Wrench snorts, lips twitching upwards. _Us?_

Numbers nods, pulling his shirt back over his head.

“Us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The scene from Hang 'em High they were watching is the same one in Gunslinger, and yes that random cowboy saving Clint Eastwood has some serious homoerotic overtones. 10/10 would recommend.
> 
> I haven't decided yet if I like how the sex scene turned out, since I've never really written one before, so please let me know what you think because I've got no goddamn clue what I'm doing lol


	16. Chapter Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for how short this one is, I was stuck on the latest chapter for Gunslinger and needed to put something out to get out of a funk

Fargo, 1996

Wrench grips the steering wheel with white knuckles, glancing at Numbers now and again to see his jaw set, teeth gritted, lips pressed into a thin white line, and is momentarily grateful that Carlyle could not talk to him even if he wanted to. This is enough. He wants to take Numbers’ hand in his, wants to run his thumb along the length of his fingers, wants to feel the rough skin of his knuckles when he squeezes his hand to tell him it’ll be alright, but with their boss in the car it’s not an option and even if it was he knows he’d be lying.

Because at the end of the day, they’re mooks. Plain and simple.

They’d have to be fools to think that Fargo gives two shits about either of them--it’d be easy to find another tall, broad kid with an empty stomach and emptier convictions, or some strung out accountant with a vicious streak fresh out of the slammer. They’re cannon fodder, nothing else, just a couple of meat shields for the important, pencil-pushing slimeballs in corporate, and none of these fuckers are ever going to care about how cold his bed feels when Numbers leaves in the morning.

If the whole thing went tits up, he isn’t confident that he’d do his duty and put the boss’ life before his own. Before Numbers.

He knows it’s dangerous to think like that, dangerous to think at all when he’s nothing but a hired gun, but it’s true. Fuck, but it’s true.

To his right, Numbers turns up the radio, and he feels the deep vibrations of the bass line. It’s almost comforting. When he turns his head and meets his partner’s eyes he knows that that’s exactly why he did it. It makes something warm and light bloom in his chest and he has to look back at the road to keep from smiling.

Wrench drums his fingers against the wheel and glances back at Carlyle in the rear view mirror. He’s talking on the phone, brows strung together, clearly pissed about something. Or maybe just stressed. It’s hard to tell from his expression alone, but with the way things are it’s anyone’s guess. 

The way things are. Fuck.

In the past few months the entire syndicate’s been thrown reeling; Thompson was the first suit to get it--his wife woke up in the morning to find his severed head stuffed in the mailbox. The bosses had tried to keep it quiet while they figured shit out, but everyone knew, because word spreads through the syndicate like gossip through a high school. 

Thompson had debts. Maybe, they thought, maybe one of those debts had caught up with him?

And then Wychowski was thrown from the top of a parking garage.

And then somebody eviscerated Tripoli’s dog.

Nobody has any idea who’s doing it but there’s no way they could have done it without help from the inside. All Wrench knows is that the big man’s pissed, beyond pissed, and probably scared too; he’d really loved that dog, as much as he’s capable of loving anything.

But worse, if somebody could have gotten to Tripoli’s home, that means they have or could get access to pretty much anything. Wrench knows assets aren’t being targeted, just the men in charge, but they’re just as likely to get killed along the way if another syndicate tries to move in on Fargo. He thinks about Numbers, wonders if he would have been one of the ones to die if he was still an accountant, if Hammer and Letters hadn’t up and left.

He thinks maybe he shouldn’t be thinking like that.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Numbers probably wouldn’t appreciate it either; they’ve been sleeping together consistently for almost a year now and he’s never once stayed through the night. If he didn’t know any better, if they didn’t spend every waking moment together, Wrench would probably think he was fucking someone else. Maybe he still is.

Something cold and heavy and miserable lingers at the base in Wrench’s throat and he chews the side of his mouth, blinking rapidly. That’s the last thing he fucking needs.

He can feel Numbers’ eyes on him and his grip on the steering wheel tightens.

_You okay, man?_

Wrench shakes his head, glancing pointedly at Carlyle in the back seat where the bald man continues talking on the phone.

_He can’t understand us anyways. It’s fine._ Numbers raises an eyebrow at him expectantly. Wrench exhales sharply through his nose and takes his hands off the wheel to reply, steering with his knees.

_How much longer do you think we have to do this?_

_Until they deal with the situation, I expect._

_But how long is that gonna take? I feel more anxious driving C-A-R-L-Y-L-E than I ever do when we’re doing our goddamn job._

The side of Numbers’ mouth twitches with amusement and he’s about to reply when Carlye notices their conversation.

“Are you--is he--don’t take your fucking hands off the wheel!”

Numbers grimaces and relays the message to Wrench, whose expression darkens as he turns back to the road.

“Fucking deaf maniac’s gonna get us all killed.”

Just as Numbers turns around to respond, another car collides with the side of the Buick, sending it spiraling to the side of the road. 

Wrench breathes heavily, eyes wide, his hands aching with how tightly he’s gripping the wheel. Suddenly he remembers Numbers and turns to his right to see his partner blinking stupidly as he raises a shaking hand to the side of his sluggishly bleeding head where it slammed against the passenger side window.

“Shit,” he breathes, ignoring Wrench’s desperate attempts to fawn over him properly.

Carlyle is equally petrified, and he’s about to say something else when another car drives up behind them and the reality of the situation comes crashing down.

Numbers grabs the glock from the glove compartment as Wrench produces a machine gun from inside the duffel bag between them.

“Keep your head down,” Numbers says to Carlyle, but he’s looking at Wrench as he says it and his partner nods and they both think that this could be the last time they see each other before they kick open their car doors and start firing on their ambushers.


	17. Chapter Sixteen

Fargo, 1996

The sun hangs high in the sky, its heat so intense Wrench feels like he’s being boiled alive, like he could melt onto the pavement where he’s crouched behind the dubious cover of the car door. Bullets are whizzing by, feeling all the closer and more imminent since he can’t even hear them. He doesn’t know where Numbers is. He took off, like the reckless moron he is, circling around to try and flank the assholes who ambushed them since his gun doesn’t hold as many bullets. 

If they make it out of this alive Wrench is going to fucking kill him.

He turns and smashes the window with the butt of his gun and returns fire, using the flat surface as an anchor. Wrench isn’t sure if Carlyle’s alive or not, hasn’t seen him since he crouched down in the back seat, but it doesn’t really matter because if they survive this bullshit and go back to work without him Tripoli will wring both their necks.

All this, just to end up in a shallow grave. Or shot on the side of the road.

Fuck.

It’s not like his life hasn’t been in danger before, of course not, that comes with the job and he accepted a long time ago that he wasn’t ever gonna live to retire. But he’s happy now, more so than he’s been in a while. Even if his situation with Numbers isn’t ideal, at least he _has_ him now. He isn’t ready to lose him. Isn’t sure that he ever will be.

Just like the world to give him what he wants more than anything and then rip it away.

Wrench grits his teeth as he fires on the other car, taking the opportunity to glance around almost desperately for some sign of his partner. 

He ducks down abruptly, narrowly missing being shot in the face. His hands are shaking but he hasn’t noticed yet.

“Fuck,” he breathes, eyes wide as he struggles to catch his breath.

In another universe, he thinks, he wasn’t fast enough. 

In another universe he caught a bullet between the eyes and maybe Numbers made it out or maybe he didn’t but there’s no way he would’ve known because that would have been the end for him. 

Would Hammer have ever heard about what happened to him? 

Would anyone give a shit that some deaf delinquent from Texas ended up with his brains splattered across the concrete defending a corrupt piece of shit like Carlyle? 

Would anyone give a shit that when he was little he was obsessed with Peter Pan and with cowboys and that he’d wanted to be an astronaut? 

Would anyone give a shit that he loved Numbers, that he died loving Numbers, even if he didn’t say it and his partner didn’t feel the same? 

Would anyone give a shit that he was only twenty-three?

No, he thinks. No they wouldn’t. And so Wrench takes a ragged breath and goes back to shooting, ignores the familiar itching of the inside of his wrists and the voice in his head that just keeps saying again and again, _I don’t want to die anymore_.

But it doesn’t matter what he wants. It never has. 

Wrench just wishes he could see Numbers, that that asshole would show up again just so he’d know he was still alive if nothing else. Another part of him hopes that he managed to get away somehow, that he left him there to die, even if the thought makes something inside of him feel like he’s being ripped apart from the inside.

And then he sees him.

Numbers is pressed against a tree on the edge of the forest, off to the side, watching Wrench with a look on his face that almost resembles worry. 

Wrench quickly signs, hoping Numbers can see it and understand.

_How many left?_

Numbers glances at their ambushers’ cars.

_Four._

Wrench nods repeatedly, mulling over a plan.

_Cover me and I’ll flank them._

Numbers nods, biting his lip anxiously.

Oh, fuck it, Wrench thinks. 

_I love you._

He doesn’t know why he says it, only knows that they’re outnumbered two to one and he almost died today and still might and he’s not gonna do this stupid fucking plan without telling Numbers. He needs him to know, just in case, because another Wrench in another universe didn’t get the chance.

Numbers doesn’t say it back, but it’s not like he really expected him to. Instead he starts firing, ducking behind the tree when he gets the attention of the two nearest men. Hits one in the neck.

Wrench takes a deep breath and then dashes from cover, sprinting towards a tree on the other side of the road, and presses himself behind it when he reaches it, a grin tugging at his lips.

He turns and flanks their attackers, opening fire. 

Hits one in the leg, another in the chest, as Numbers advances and takes out the fourth.

_Are you okay?_ Numbers asks, looking him up and down from a few feet away.

Wrench nods. _I didn’t see you. I thought you were shot._

_Well, I’m not._ Numbers signs, lips a thin white line. He doesn’t look at Wrench.

_Should we get C-A-R-L-Y-L-E?_

Numbers nods, then frowns. One of their ambushers is still alive; the one Wrench shot in the leg. He kicks the fallen man’s gun away.

_You take him, I’ll bring C-A-R-L-Y-L-E to T-R-I-P-O-L-I._

_You’re meeting me after, right?_

_Of course. The warehouse on 86. See if we can’t find out who sent these D-O-U-C-H-E-B-A-G-S._

He knows it. They’ve used it before to interrogate the sort of stupid assholes who screw over the syndicate and get caught.

_Be careful,_ Wrench signs, _For all we know there might be others._

Numbers waves away his concerns, heading back to the car to check on Carlyle. He gives Wrench a thumbs-up before getting in the driver’s seat and pulling away.

He watches him go, frowning, before turning his attention to the writhing man at his feet. 

Wrench grabs him under the armpits and hauls him roughly to his feet, dragging him to the back of one of the ambushers’ cars that is slightly less riddled with bullet holes and tossing him unceremoniously in the trunk.

He doesn’t know why he does it, but Wrench gets the sudden impulse to see the man who almost shot him in the face today.

And so he pulls off his mask, lets it drop from his hand onto the concrete as he stares in shock.

Holy shit, he knows him.

When he looks at the face of the man in the trunk, trying feebly to spit at him, he recognizes him as the man who pointed a shotgun in his face in a basement in Kansas six years prior.

Face blank, eyes a million miles from here, he closes the trunk, walks around to the driver’s seat, and drives away.

He thinks about the box of photos in the man’s basement and his grip on the steering wheel tightens.

Oh, he’s gonna have some fun with this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can expect chapter eighteen and also the next chapter of Gunslinger shortly :-)


	18. Chapter Seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I'm currently partway through writing what was *supposed* to be chapter 18, but it's turning out longer than I expected and so I've decided to divide it up into a couple different chapters instead so I can get them out in a timely manner.
> 
> ALSO important to keep in mind: the next few chapters are going to be the last. I had a few more planned out but upon looking them over as I've been writing this one I've realized they're basically redundant and unneeded for the story, so expect this to wrap up after around chapter 20, give or take. 
> 
> There's gonna be more, though--it's gonna be a series of works taking place within the TBDH!timeline, varying in length but still following different points of the same story, just with enough time between them that it didn't feel right putting them together as a single work if that makes any sense.
> 
> I've got the bulk of the first chapter to the sequel written already so you can probably expect that within the next few days, as well as the next Gunslinger chapter that I've started but not finished since despite my plans to focus on that fic for the time being this one grabbed me for some reason.
> 
> GENERAL CONTENT WARNING for the last few chapters of this fic: lots of violence, torture, etc. and also use of homophobic slurs

Fargo, 1996

Numbers is a shitty driver, this he knows to be true.

He always has been; never had the temperament for it. Too anxious, too angry, nowhere near patient enough to be anything resembling safe behind the wheel. 

Which is why he’d been more than happy to let Wrench do the driving--it was his car anyways, even if Numbers had gone with him to pick it out from the lot. He’d dragged his partner around the dealership for hours, not letting the salesmen try to pull a fast one on Wrench, because he knew their games, what kind of bullshit they’d pull to get someone as kind and poor and painfully naive as Wrench to buy a shitty car. It was weird, remembering his brief stint as a car salesman before he went to prison. 

He barely remembers most of it, had been high out of his mind on a near daily basis to get the memory of what he was running from out of his head.

His hands grip the steering wheel hard, digging his nails into the leather as he steps on the gas.

Carlyle had been real fucking annoying on the drive back to syndicate headquarters. Wouldn’t stop bitching for even a second when he wasn’t making frantic phone calls. He’d barely resisted kicking that asshole to the curb when they got there and speeding off after Wrench, only held back so he could give Tripoli the rundown on what had happened.

The big man was fucking furious. 

He isn’t much one for talking, never has been as long as Numbers has known him, but his face turned a dark and ugly purple when Numbers described the attack. Stabbed the fish he was eating for dinner in the head so hard its eyes nearly popped out.

Scary shit, he thinks.

His jaw clenches. He needs to be at that goddamn warehouse yesterday.

Luckily the roads are pretty clear right now, this being the middle of nowhere, or else he’d be fucked.

For all Wrench’s worrying about more of those assholes following Numbers he knows it’s more likely that if there are any they’d go after his partner instead. That’s what he would do, anyways, in their shoes.

Wrench is good. He can take care of himself. But Numbers isn’t sure he’d bet on him, alone, against a whole fucking ambush.

Hell, he almost got it just a few hours ago, when he was crouched behind the car door. Numbers’ heart nearly stopped when it happened. He isn’t sure what he would have done if his partner didn’t make it out of that. He isn’t sure that he wouldn’t have just given up then and there and let those assholes kill him and Carlyle and burn the whole fucking syndicate to the ground.

And then of course there’s the other thing. The ‘love’ thing.

Numbers has no fucking idea what to do about _that_. If Letters were here he’d probably call her, bitch at her for hours, then go get drunk and pass out on her couch while she screws some beefcake she met at the bar. That’s how it’s always gone before, when Wrench got too close for comfort.

But she isn’t here.

Fuck, he misses her.

Because now the only person in his life that he can stand to be around is Wrench, but he can’t exactly talk to _Wrench_ about this bullshit, can he? And the worst part is, it’s not like he doesn’t--

His grip tightens. No. No. Not fucking going there right now.

He isn’t nearly drunk enough to start trying to examine how he feels about Wrench. They’re good together. Good as partners, good in bed, good for just hanging out whenever Wrench decides to crash on his couch and read with him or watch shitty daytime television with him or go shopping for groceries.

And a part of him feels like he knows him, like Wrench has always been there, to the point where it’s hard to imagine the decades of shit before he met him.

But that’s. That’s normal.

It doesn’t mean anything.

He doesn’t--

Numbers turns on the radio, cranks it up to full volume until the whole damn car is practically shaking with the weight of the bass.

The buick hurtles down the road as Numbers steps on the gas, watching for the sign to turn onto 86.

Watching for police cars.

Watching for some sort of sign that Wrench didn’t make it to the Warehouse.

He doesn’t find any. Instead, when he turns onto 86 and slows as he watches for the warehouse to come up on his right, he sees one of the black SUVs, shot full of holes parked in front of the warehouse, and breathes a sigh of relief.

Numbers parks, exhaling sharply through his nose as he turns off the radio and turns the key in the ignition, settling back into the driver’s seat. God, this whole thing is beyond fucked.

He kneads the bridge of his nose between two fingers, groaning loudly. “FUUUUUUCK.”

Numbers lets his head fall back against the headrest and sighs, staring up at the ceiling of the car for a moment before propelling himself forward and getting out, slamming the car door behind him as he stalks towards the warehouse.

He’s ready for this goddamn nightmare to end. Just wants to get this done with so he and Wrench can go home.

More than anything he wishes he was back in bed. That he hadn’t snuck out of Wrench’s apartment so early that morning. At least it was warm there.

Numbers pushes open the rusted door to the warehouse, closing it carefully behind him. Wrench visibly perks up when he sees him, although his face is still set in the stoic expression he wears when they’re on a job. 

_He crack yet?_ He gestures to the man slumped in a chair in the middle of the room, his nose almost touching his chest.

Wrench shakes his head. _He’s kept his mouth shut. I roughed him up a bit for you, though._

“Oh, joy,” Numbers muses, grinning wryly. _It’s getting late. Once we wrap this shit up do you wanna go to dinner?_

Wrench’s lips twitch upward. _Anywhere specific in mind?_

_That new restaurant down the street from my place. My treat._

His partner nods, but he can see it in his face that something’s clearly bothering him. Numbers frowns, raising an eyebrow.

Wrench sighs, scratching the side of his face. His knuckles are bruised and bleeding, split nearly to the bone. For a stupid, fleeting second Numbers feels the urge to kiss it better and immediately kicks himself for it. _I know this asshole. From before F-A-R-G-O._

Numbers’ eyebrows shoot halfway up his forehead. He knows literally nothing about Wrench’s life before the syndicate. He was young enough when they met that he might as well always have worked there for all Numbers cared to know at the time.

_Anything I should know?_

_It’s a long story. Not relevant. Kick the shit out of him._

Numbers grins wickedly. _With pleasure._

He strides forward, face slipping into the easy, blank mask he wears when they’re working. The dead eyes. Those are all his own, he knows that, but times like these he doesn’t feel so shitty about it. 

It’s been a year of this and somehow he still isn’t quite used to the thought that he kills people for a living.

It’s not so much the _killing_ part--he took his first life long before crossing paths with Fargo, has been an irredeemable piece of shit for longer than he can remember--it’s more the monotony of it. To the people he kills, he’s the worst thing that ever happened to them, the consequence hanging over them while they did the stupid shit that landed them in his clutches, but to him it’s just work. It’s just what he does every day with his partner, and then they go home and watch the game or make small talk with the troglodytes at the office.

The whole thing, the whole shitty life he leads, it’s normal. It’s almost boring.

But not so much this part.

All his life he’s been a piece of shit, but he’s never been so terrifying.

There’s a power in it, a strength, the likes of which he’s never known, and if he could refine that feeling into powder and snort it he would, even if he’s long since kicked that habit.

It’s not so much the violence itself he craves as the sense that he’s unrecognizable now from that snot-nosed little shit who watched his father’s waterlogged car being pulled from the river from his aunt’s TV.

He’s never been farther from Jerry Menuek in his life, and the further he gets from that fucking kid, the more miles he puts between himself and the loser fucking junkie who was dumped, covered in vomit, in front of a hospital, the further he gets from feeling like a fucking person, the more alive he feels. The quieter the anger, the pent-up repressed frustration that’s lived in him all his life gets.

He wants to shatter everything of himself that isn’t Numbers.

But most of all, right now, he wants to shatter this asshole’s fucking face.


	19. Chapter Eighteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one or (maaaaybe) two more to go!!
> 
> WARNING: extremely graphic imagery, depiction of torture, references to sexual abuse, use of homophobic slurs

Fargo, 1996

Numbers walks up to the man in the chair, grabbing him roughly by his hair and jerking his hair up to get a good look at him, and his heart drops into his stomach.

No. No, no, this isn’t possible, what the _fuck_.

The color drains from his face all at once as he stares into the yellow-and-purple swelling bruises disfiguring the features of the disgusting piece of shit he was stupid enough to think was anything but poison for him a million years ago, a million miles away.

He feels afraid.

He feels small.

He feels like fucking _Jerry_.

“Yer fuckin’ kidding me…” the man grumbles, eyes narrowing with fear poorly disguised as hatred.

Numbers beams, his eyes blacker and deader than ever before.

“Great to see ya, Gene.”

“Fuck you.” He spits blood at Numbers’ face, which he blinks away as he leans back, wiping it from his face as his expression darkens into something ugly.

He chuckles humorlessly, soaking in the image before him.

“Looks like somebody’s not cooperating. Say, Gene, are you cooperating?”

Gene thrashes in his chair, teeth bared like a feral animal. “FUCK OFF, YOU JUNKIE PIECE OF SHIT!”

“Awesome. Wonderful. I was hoping you’d say that.” He turns to Wrench, who is staring at him like he doesn’t recognize him. He looks almost afraid. It makes something inside him twist with guilt, but he chooses to ignore it. There’s more pressing things to deal with right now, like beating the living shit out of Gene until he doesn’t even look like a fucking person anymore.

“We got a tire iron around here, bud?” It’s more for Gene’s benefit than Wrench’s, and they usually play up the signing more--it’s confusing and therefore intimidating. But he wants Gene to suffer, wants him to know exactly what sort of hell is waiting for him.

Wrench nods slowly, frowning, as he walks over to a side table, producing a tire iron. It’s crusted in red; Numbers isn’t entirely sure whether that’s rust or blood, but it doesn’t really matter anyways.

He takes the thing, letting it fall against his leg as he turns his attention to Gene.

“Look at me, asshole.” The older man won’t stop squinting at Wrench, like he’s trying to place him from somewhere. Numbers doesn’t like it.

He doesn’t fucking listen, just keeps staring, and Numbers’ blood boils. How fucking dare he, after all the shit he put him through, after how he ruined his fucking life past the point of return. With Gene here, he has his boogeyman. Now he gets to fucking kill him. And the worthless piece of shit still has the audacity not to look at him.

“FUCKING LOOK AT ME, OLD MAN!”

Numbers is shaking but he hasn’t realized it yet, clenching the cool metal of the tire iron with white knuckles. He feels a hand on his shoulder and turns to see Wrench, watching him with open concern. He usually never drops the silent killer schtick when they’re on the job.

_Do you want me to take over for a bit?_

He’s about to respond when the man in the chair laughs harshly. It’s an ugly sound, cutting through the stale air like a knife. Makes Numbers want to rip his goddamn throat out so he can never make a noise like that ever again.

“Hey, I know you! HA! I fuckin’ know you, you fuckin’--” he coughs up blood. “You’re the deaf one, the fuckin’ queer what broke into my house in ‘90!”

Numbers frowns, turning slowly towards Gene.

“What the fuck are you talking about, man?” Behind him, Wrench freezes, his eyes widening as he looks between Gene and Numbers with dawning realization, but Numbers isn’t quite there yet.

The man in the chair laughs again, grinning lecherously.

Numbers slams the tire iron down on his knee as hard as he can, a loud crack resounding through the empty warehouse only to be drowned out as Gene howls in agony. Numbers grabs the front of the older man’s shirt, jerking him forward so their faces are only inches apart, and tries not to flinch in disgust at the sudden and overwhelming stench of shit.

“What the _fuck_ are you talking about, you sack of shit?”

Gene whimpers and Numbers smirks. “Don’t think I won’t break your other fucking knee.”

“Do it,” he spits, glaring defiantly. “I ain’t scared of you, kid.”

And so Numbers does. It’s not quite as satisfying as the first time, so he hits him again in the ribs and again and again--the face is tempting, but he doesn’t want to kill him just yet.

“Who sent you to ambush us? Who's going after Fargo?”

“Ya know….” Gene chuckles weakly. “You and I, we ain’t so different, Jerry.”

“Don’t call me that. Who sent you?”

“See, I may not be some fancy pants intellectual like you, Jerry, but I read, y’know?”

Numbers tosses aside the tire iron and and punches him in the teeth. He’s not that patient, it seems.

“Shut the fuck up, Gene.”

“Now I hear, I hear history repeats itself, Jerry. When it comes to all that…..” He waves a hand. “All that fag shit. Y’know what I’m sayin, Jerry?”

“I said shut the fuck up, Gene. Don’t make me make you shit yourself again, you pathetic fuck.”

“Now I’m not….I’m not like you and yer friend there, Jerry, I ain’t a fuckin’ queer.”

Numbers rolls his eyes, deciding to ignore him he turns to Wrench. 

_Can you get me a knife?_ Wrench is still staring at him like the world’s just come crashing down around him.

“But lemme tell ya, Jerry, fuckin’ the deaf kid? Yer one sick puppy.”

That makes him pause.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Gene?”

The old man grins, his remaining teeth stained crimson. He looks between the two hitmen, realizing the power he holds.

“Oooooh, you didn’t notice, did ya? Not so smart now, eh?”

Numbers’ expression drops as the gears start turning. 

Oh, fuck. No.

“Didn’t realize your uhh….your fuckin’ boyfriend back there’s the same fucking kid used to follow you around like a lost puppy ‘til ya broke his damn heart?”

Fuck. There’s no fucking way this is happening. 

He’s dead or he’s dreaming but there’s no fucking way this is real, and yet it all makes so much sense now laid out for him he doesn’t know how he never saw it before.

“Now I dunno what Mr. Freud would say about _that_ but there’s somethin’ real fucking wrong with you, Jerry, if you’re fucking that goddamn kid.”

Numbers turns to Wrench, his eyes pouring over every detail of his face as he wracks his brain for a resemblance, and feels suddenly ill. How did he not see it before? Is he really that fucking stupid? Christ, is he really that fucked up?

“Real sick puppy, Jerry, _that_ you are.”

Something inside him snaps.

He tears his eyes away from Wrench, stalks away, his hands balled into fists as he makes his way to the rickety metal table off to the side. Picks the meanest looking knife from the selection, then stalks back. 

All the while, his hand still hasn’t stopped shaking.

“Who the fuck sent you, Gene?” His voice doesn’t quite have the same hard edge to it as before. Numbers has been shaken up, thoroughly thrown off his game, and now he can’t quite find it in himself to be the monster he wants to be.

He can’t focus on the task at hand, no matter how much he wants to make Gene hurt, because he can’t stop thinking about the look on Wrench’s face, and when he looks at him he can’t help but see the way Wyatt looked at him a lifetime ago when he made him a promise he knew he would never keep.

This is where he ended up.

This is where they both ended up.

He’d always hoped, when lucid enough to think back to those days at all, that Wyatt turned out okay. Got out of that place somehow, had a normal life, lived happily enough to forget about him entirely.

But it seems the world is even crueller than he thought.

Lucky for him, he’s a cruel son of a bitch too.

Numbers straddles Gene’s lap, ignoring the way his stomach lurches when he remembers the last time he did this, and he holds the knife in front of the older man’s face, relishing the look on panic in his eyes as it gleams in the dim light of the warehouse.

He runs the knife slowly down the side of his face, almost suggestively, before grabbing a fistful of Gene’s greasy, thinning hair with one hand and jamming the knife into the flesh connecting his ear to his head with the other. 

Gene screams in pain as Numbers cuts his ear off, slowly but surely--if asked he’d say it was to make him suffer more, but really it was just a lot harder to do than he’d expected.

“Did you touch him? Did you hurt Wyatt like you hurt me, you sick fuck?” Numbers hisses through gritted teeth, unable to hide his rage.

The old man laughs. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Numbers stabs him in the gut, twisting the knife. He knows he hasn’t hit anything important, nothing that’ll make him bleed out faster than he wants him to, just wants him to squeal like a stuck pig.

He grabs Gene’s jaw in his hand, pulling out the knife and waving it in front of his face.

“I--I didn’t! I never did anything to the kid!”

Numbers turns to Wrench, finds his partner’s expression absolutely stricken.

_Did he hurt you?_

Wrench startles, like he only just realized he isn’t alone, and shakes his head slowly.

_I punched him. Hammer and I got out of there. He wanted to, though._

“What--what’s he tellin’ you? No good lyin’...I never did nothing!”

“Oh, I believe you, Gene.” He smiles sweetly, patting the man on the cheek with his free, blood-stained hand, before promptly gouging his eye out.


	20. Chapter Nineteen

Fargo, 1996

The sky is a hole at night, Wrench thinks as he leans against the hood of the car, a cigarette in his hand. Whatever’s there in the day, at night it just empties out into nothing, and all that’s keeping them rooted to the ground, keeping them from falling into it, is gravity. They’re all fools if they think they’re standing upright, rather than dangling over the abyss. He takes a long drag of his cigarette--was never much one for smoking really, that was more Numbers’ thing, but tonight’s as good a night as any to start--and flicks the ashes onto the ground.

Numbers emerges from the treeline, hands in his pockets. He looks white as a ghost, the car’s headlights setting his skin to glowing, and his dark eyes look about as empty as the sky itself.

Wrench offers him his cigarette, but Numbers waves him off.

_Tell me we’ve got shovels back there._

He circles around to the trunk, rummaging through its contents before he finds what he needs.

 _You took care of it?_ Wrench gestures to his face, grimacing, and Numbers nods, scrunching up his nose in disgust as he brandishes a garbage bag in one hand.

They gave Gene the full treatment once he started talking. Cut off his fingers, pulled his teeth, bashed his face in until it was nothing but stinking meat and splintered bone. 

Wrench still sees it when he closes his eyes; the way Numbers’ face set to stone when he got what he needed. 

The way he circled around the blind man, slow and deliberate like some sort of wild cat, some sort of predator, before he reached around and stabbed Gene in the side of the neck, slowly dragging the knife through his throat to the other side until he was nearly decapitated. The way the blood gushed out, slowly and then all at once, like water trickling from a stream. Numbers’ eyes were emptier then than he’d ever seen before. 

Disappointed, almost. 

Like whatever he had built up that moment to be in his mind, the act of cutting Gene’s throat wasn’t quite as cathartic as he’d imagined.

He hands Numbers a shovel and they make their way through the trees to the place where, down the path a ways, Numbers dragged Gene’s body. It seems to take forever, and for a moment in his mind’s eye these woods, this path, feel like something of a dream.

_The light begins to die, slowly, but he can see the path ahead of him perfectly. Countless bodies hang from the trees, men in crisp suits with grey faces and too-wide eyes, their tongues lolling from slack jaws, their entrails dark and oozing. They gasp at him like suffocating fish, mouths forming words that he cannot hear._

Wrench feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He’s known silence all his life, has been used to it as long as he can remember, but he never did get over his childhood fear of the dark. 

He’d never really felt like he was missing much by not being able to hear, that itself never bothered him, but when combined with the inability to see he feels like he’s drowning in nothing. There’s light from the flashlight illuminating a few feet ahead, sure, but all around him is dark and there could be anything out there.

It makes him think of when he was small, how when his father came home especially drunk and mean he and Ethan would lock themselves in a closet with the lights turned off until the danger had past.

He’s never felt safe in the dark.

Wrench feels a hand at the crook in his elbow and startles, turning in a panic only to calm when he sees that it’s only Numbers. For a second he is grateful for the low light, that Numbers can’t see the way his cheeks burn with embarrassment at his own foolishness.

_Are you okay?_

He nods sheepishly, feeling like a fucking idiot. 

Numbers watches him warily, but he keeps a hand on Wrench’s arm as they continue forward, leading him through the darkness. It reminds him of--

Fuck. God, no, he doesn’t want to fucking think about that.

Because ‘Jerry’ has been a ghost haunting his life, looming in the background of his hopes and dreams since he was a kid. First he’d laid awake at night and prayed he’d come back for him, then he became resigned to the reality that he never would, then he’d heard that he choked on his own vomit and now he’s his partner.

Somehow, knowing how that particular story ends doesn’t give him any closure. It just throws the whole thing into further mystery. He can see the beginning and he can see the end but he can’t reconcile how Jerry turned into Numbers, what strange twist of fate led him to that lonely stretch of highway that night. He wonders, if Numbers had been on the right bus into Fargo, would they have met?

And now that they have, now that Numbers is irrevocably a part of his life, he doesn’t know what to do with it.

Because he’s still stuck with all this resentment and all this longing and he has him but he doesn’t and after what they’ve learned tonight he isn’t sure that he’ll ever have him again and he’s not sure he could take Numbers leaving again because at this point he’s all he has left in the world.

The body is already starting to stink when they find it; Gene is turning to stone, freezing into the contortion that is rigor mortis. Wrench feels bile rise in his throat at the stench of it but Numbers doesn’t seem to care; at least, he looks no more pale than he was before as they set to work digging a grave for the dead man.

As they work, he focuses on the task at hand, but the excruciating aching of his back only grows worse and worse, tearing him from the blissful numbness of his concentration and forcing him to think about what it is exactly that he’s doing. 

He wishes Ethan was there with them, more than anything.

As much of an asshole as his twin is, he’s at least enough of a loudmouth to distract him.

It’s funny; he both misses his brother and is grateful to be free of him, because in the year since he left he’s felt more like his own person than ever before. That notion is ridiculous, though, of course. He knows that the life he lives is not, and never has been his own. Certainly not now, that he’s bound for life to this fucking job. This life he never fucking asked for in the first place.

Looking down at Gene now, where he lies crumpled and curled in on himself--his skin grey and rotting where it isn’t swollen and disfigured, a fly scuttering across his open, clouded-over eye--Wrench feels more than a little sick. He’s seen plenty of dead; hell, he watched his brother bash their father’s fucking head in, but something about this one feels like the first time. Killing is nothing to him now, but tonight he feels less a killer more the stupid, naive kid he was when first he met that horrible man.

Numbers stares blankly at the corpse for a long moment, his free hand clenched into a fist at his side while the other grips Wrench’s arm as if he were a child clinging to a security blanket.

For a brief, stupid moment, Wrench feels the overwhelming impulse to gather Numbers up in his arms and never let him go, like they aren’t killers, aren’t irrevocably fucked up people, like there isn’t a dead man lying at their feet and like they themselves aren’t going to end up in shallow graves just like this some day.

He’s missed him, all these years. The way one misses breathing in the moments before asphyxiation.

And so he doesn’t pull away, lets the older man use him as an anchor as he sways, uneasy on his feet. 

Finally, as the darkness of night is punctured by a burst of orange light that begins to slowly bleed into the coming dawn, Numbers turns to Wrench, his eyes utterly devoid of emotion. 

_Help me with his feet,_ he says, more a plea than anything.

Wrench thinks that he would help him with anything if he asked.

He thinks that this is one of the worst nights of his life.

He thinks that he has never loved anything in his life the way he loves Numbers.

It takes another hour to fill in the hole. They don’t talk, but that’s nothing unusual. When it’s through, Numbers turns away without saying anything else, walking quickly back through the darkness to the car without so much as a glance back to see if Wrench is following.

He leaves the flashlight, though.

As Wrench follows, slowly, gripping it in his hand with white knuckles, he thinks that maybe Numbers could love him, too.


	21. Chapter Twenty

Fargo, 1996

Orange is a real ugly fuckin’ color, Numbers thinks to himself as he leans drunkenly against the payphone. The sky’s saturated orange and purple, casting the tops of the trees and the buildings on the horizon into shadow, and the payphone is covered in graffiti both orange and black and stains that may be vomit and some stupid asshole’s chewed up gum stuck to the underside of it. 

He laughs raggedly at one of the messages, scrawled with marker in a woman’s hand.

_Call Sherri for a good time_

The loop of the ‘S’ isn’t right, he thinks; and the Sherri he remembers didn’t used to dot her i’s with hearts.

Numbers leans back against the rickety old thing as he takes the receiver off the hook and dials for Jergen.

“Mate, you better have a _real_ good reason for wakin’ me up this early.”

“Are you fucking serious? Did you sleep through the whole--the whole goddamn thing yesterday?”

“What bloody thing? Are you drunk?”

“The fuckin’...Christ, man, the ambush! How the fuck do you still have a job?”

He kneads the bridge of his nose between two fingers, letting out an exasperated groan.

“Look, if you’re just gonna be an arsehole, I’m--”

“Jergen, oh my god, just fucking listen to me for a second.”

No response. Finally, the annoying douchebag shuts up.

“I need you to tell Tripoli that it was Madison.”

“What was Madison?”

“THE--just…..just tell him, okay? It was Madison, and they’re trying to get us back for that job we did a while back, and it’s out of my hands now. Okay?”

“Right, yeah, I’ll tell ‘im. Oh yeah, and did I ever tell you--”

“I don’t care, Jergen. Just. Me and Wrench. Our involvement in this Madison shit ends here, right? Whatever Tripoli’s gonna do about it, whoever he’s sending, leave us the fuck out of it.”

“Sure, sure--”

Numbers hands up abruptly, grunting as bile rises in his throat and he braces himself against the payphone, waiting for the nausea to pass.

“Fuck,” he says, curling in on himself as everything around him starts spinning. “Oh, fuck.”

He knew he was fucked up before, but last night was something else. 

Darkness is spreading at the edge of his vision and he has to sit down, leaning against the wall, before he passes out.

_In his mind it’s 1980 and it’s two days before Christmas and he’s a stupid fucking kid who still thinks the world owes him something and his throat hurts from yelling. He’s shaking like a leaf when he screams in his foster father’s face, tells the mean old bastard he hates him, nearly gets put through a fucking wall for his efforts._

_It shakes the whole goddamn house and his dealer’s truck is outside, laying on the horn, and he thinks that if he has to spend another minute in this miserable fucking place he’s gonna end up blowing his fucking brains out._

_“Get the fuck out of my house, you stupid sack of shit!”_

_“Fuck you, old man!”_

_“I said GET THE FUCK OUT! If I ever have to see your fucking face again I’ll kill you myself, you hear me?!”_

_He takes a deep breath, looks to the open kitchen door where his foster mother is furiously scrubbing at a dish, shaking even harder than he is, and grits his teeth as he realizes he’s all alone here._

_“Fine,” he says, and stomps up the stairs, taking them two at a time in his haste to get away as he can still hear the fat bastard hollering downstairs._

_He wipes furiously at his eyes with his sleeve, feeling his face growing hotter and hotter with unshed tears, and swears under his breath as he slams the door to his bedroom behind him. Jerry pulls a suitcase from the bottom of his closet and starts haphazardly tossing his clothes inside, stifling a whimper as he continues to sniffle, trying and failing to hold back tears._

_This was a mistake, he thinks, as his righteous anger begins to fade into the cold realization that he’s seriously fucked up this time. What the fuck is he gonna do now? It’s not like he really has any friends, he’s lucky his dealer’s even giving him a ride. Fuck, he’s gonna die out there._

_“Fucking...fucking idiot...stupid fucking junkie, what was I thinking..?” Jerry sobs, digging his fingernails into the sleeves of his hoodie in a failed attempt to comfort himself._

_There’s always Gene, he thinks, and his stomach lurches. As much as the older man scares him sometimes, well, he has to care about him, right? Of course he does. Gene’s all he has, he thinks, ignoring the way he feels sick at the thought._

_Most of his clothes are too shitty to even bother packing; maybe one of the kids would get them. His stash, thank fucking god, hasn’t been messed with—which Jerry is grateful for because otherwise he’d have to kill that fucking prick._

_A part of him wants to do it, anyways. A part of him’s clearly fucking sick in the head._

_And then, behind him, Jerry hears a floorboard creak._

_“Shit,” he breathes, and quickly scrubs at his face with his sleeve, ignoring the rawness of his cheeks before turning around._

_It’s Wyatt. Of course it’s fucking Wyatt._

_The kid’s standing in the doorway, eyes wide, looking at him like a lost puppy._ Where are you going? __

_Jerry frowns, his brows knitting together in confused. Wait, he thinks, this isn’t how this happened. And since when did Wyatt have spiderman pajamas--the kid was always into cowboys._

_And that’s when the scene changes._

_The walls melt away and he finds himself in an entirely different bedroom, in a whole different fucking state, and the walls are covered in blood and his friends are dying on the ground and the middle-aged homeowners who wouldn’t just shut the fuck up are tangled together on the bed, their brains splattered across the ceiling, and Wyatt is still looking at him like a deer caught in the headlights but now there’s a gaping hole in his head that’s dripping blood down his face._

_Jerry shakes uncontrollably, practically throwing the gun in his hand as far away from him as possible before he kneels before the kid, uselessly cupping his face as if by doing so he could somehow stop this._

_“Fuck, Wyatt, I’m so sorry oh fuck I didn’t mean to oh my god--”_

_Wyatt smiles at him, sweet as he ever was, and it’s the worst thing Jerry has ever seen._

__Why’d you have to leave me there, J-E-R-R-Y? Why didn’t you come back? __

_The kid offers Jerry his hand and he looks down to see that his wrist is covered in blood._

__It’s your fault that I did it, J-E-R-R-Y. You did this to me. __

_“I didn’t,” he sobs, curling in on himself in horror. “I didn’t know.”_

_When he looks again Wyatt is gone and Wrench is there in his place--except they’re the same person, aren’t they?--and he’s glaring at Jerry like he wants to kill him._

__It’ll be your fault, you know that, right? __

_“What?”_

__Someday you’re gonna fuck up and I’m gonna die horribly. And when that day comes I want you to remember that you killed me the moment you left. __

_There’s sirens growing louder and louder in the background, nearly deafening in their intensity, and the next thing he knows the gun’s back in his hand and so he shoots Wrench and then he’s all alone in that horrible room and so he sinks to the ground, curls up on his side and bangs his head with his fists, screaming as the sirens get louder until his head feels like it’s about to explode and then--_

Numbers jerks awake to see Wrench crouched next to him, a hand on his shoulder. He breathes heavily, looking around in a panic as he feels a wetness on his cheeks and a desperate heat behind his eyes.

 _What the hell are you doing out here?_ The larger man frowns, expression concerned, as Numbers gulps down air in a vain attempt to regain control over himself. He tries to respond but his hands won’t stop shaking. 

“I passed out,” he croaks, struggling to get to his feet. Wrench supports him as he braces a hand against the wall, then once he’s on his feet he holds on to Wrench’s arm for dear life.

They carefully make their way to the door of their motel room and Numbers slumps against the wall as Wrench pulls the key from the pocket of his jeans.

Numbers collapses onto the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling while Wrench worries from afar before appearing at his side with a glass of lukewarm water that Numbers doesn’t take. He exhales sharply and shoves his free hand in the older man’s face, signing forcefully: _DRINK._

Finally, he takes the damn thing and sips slowly at it, the nausea starting to dissipate.

Wrench sits next to him, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

_Nobody likes being watched while they drink._

_Some people do._

He downs the rest of it and places the empty glass on the bedside table before flopping back and resuming his ceiling-staring. Wrench sighs heavily next to him and does the same, his legs hanging comically over the edge.

They stay like that a while, just examining the sprawling landscapes in the cracks on the ceiling, while the people in the room next door fuck loudly.

_Did you call J-E-R-G-E-N?_

_Yeah. He’s an asshole._

A grin tugs at Wrench’s lips. _An A-U-S-S-H-O-L-E._

Numbers laughs in spite of himself, throwing an arm over his eyes as he just loses his goddamn mind over Wrench’s stupid fucking joke. He doesn’t notice when the laughing turns to sobbing, only swears under his breath as he takes his arm away and avoids eye contact with his partner.

 _I’m sorry,_ Wrench signs, and he shakes his head in response.

They go back to just lying there in silence before Numbers sits up, putting his head in his hands a moment before signing.

_I killed a kid once._

Wrench sits up slowly, frowning at him as he waits for him to continue.

_I was twenty-seven. Me and some idiots I knew were breaking into a house._

_And?_

_I was high. Things got out of hand with the couple who owned the place. I lost it. Shot everybody._

Wrench is about to say something but Numbers puts a hand up to stop him. If he doesn’t get it all out now he never will.

_Then this fucking kid comes in. And he wasn’t that much older than you were the last time I saw you. I swear I didn’t know they even had a fucking kid, but I shot him in the fucking face like it was nothing._

He runs a hand through his hair, squeezing his eyes shut as he takes a deep breath before continuing. 

_I was gonna shoot myself but I ran out of bullets. Skipped town instead. Changed my name. Got arrested a couple years later for F-R-A-U-D._

Wrench nods slowly, staring down at his hands for a second.

_I tried to kill myself once._

Numbers’ breath catches in his throat. He’d guessed as much when he first noticed the scars ages ago, but to hear his partner confirm it is something else.

_Hammer killed our dad. He went to J-U-V-I-E. I went someplace worse._

He chuckles humorlessly, rubbing his eye. 

_He broke out to come get me so we could run away. We almost starved I don’t know how many times before we found F-A-R-G-O._

Numbers stares openly at his partner and feels a rush of affection for him, as well as a desire to kill anyone who’s ever hurt him.

Wrench notices and stares right back, almost a challenge.

 _I love you too,_ Numbers signs hesitantly. _I’m sorry I didn’t say it before._

_It’s fine._

_No it isn’t. You could have died yesterday and I would’ve had to live with never having told you and I’m really fucking sorry._

Wrench smiles at him like he isn’t sure that he wants to smile, and then closes the gap between them, gently pressing his lips to Numbers’. Numbers reciprocates eagerly, letting out an embarrassing noise he’s glad Wrench can’t actually hear. His fingers find their way into the younger man’s curls as his other hands go for Wrench’s belt only to be stopped by his partner.

 _Not tonight,_ he says firmly, and Numbers whines.

_You’re a cruel man, Mr. Wrench. A real monster._

He grins at that, kissing Numbers again, before pulling back to sign.

_Let’s go to bed, old man. I want you to hold me._

Numbers punches him gently on the arm, grinning in spite of himself.

That night, when he buries his nose in Wrench’s hair and curls himself around the solid heat of his partner, he will feel safer than he has in a long time. Happy, even. Like maybe they’ll be okay, maybe the car in the river isn’t so full of water, maybe the story of his life won’t end in a shallow grave. 

It’s a stupid thought and he knows it but Wrench smells like soap and the syndicate’s problems are far away and the man who hurt him a long time ago is six feet under where he belongs and so for once in his life he thinks that maybe he gets to be happy.

Maybe he gets to have a happy ending with the man he loves.

Maybe he deserves it.

It’s a faint hope, a desperate dream that will lurk in the back of his mind during moments like this for the next ten years, before they stumble across something much worse than any man. A greater evil than they can imagine.

Jerry Menuek will die cold and alone, at the hands of a man whose viciousness makes him more than human, who will swat him like a fly and leave him to bleed out in the snow.

But tonight, well.

Tonight he will be warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this has been a WIP for the better part of two years and it feels really weird to have finally finished it. Especially looking at the old drafts saved on my computer from when I initially posted it in 2015, because I like to think I've improved a lot since then? And also looking at the original plans I had for this story, the key ones were implemented even if in different ways than originally planned.
> 
> Anyways thank you so much to anyone who's still reading this thing for all the support and encouragement you've given me and continue to give me. I basically thrive on validation and so I'm very very grateful because I probably would have given up on this and on writing in general ages ago if not for you. :)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it. The first chapter of the sequel and also the next Gunslinger chapter will be up soon, time and motivation permitting.


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